


Two Weeks

by acacia59



Series: Too/To/Two [2]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:18:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5681110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacia59/pseuds/acacia59
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What did you do when I told you I was sick? And that I had received a death sentence for my crime? Nothing. That’s what you did, what you gave me. You disappeared for two weeks and then when you came back we never discussed it again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as Too Much

**November 1985**

_They said we made a perfect pair_

_I clothed myself in your glory and your love_

_How I loved you,_

_How I cried....._

_The years of care and loyalty_

_Were nothing but a sham it seems_

_The years belie we lived a lie_

_"I'll love you 'til I die"_

 

 

Freddie’s watch was broken. The watch had been a gift from the record label so he didn’t know exactly how much it had cost. But it had been bloody expensive, Freddie knew that much, handcrafted in Geneva by a company that only makes ten watches a year or some such shit. Yes, it was a very good watch. Which made it all the more aggravating now that it was telling him that it was six o’clock in the fucking morning when he had just slipped off to the stairwell of The Sugar Shack for ten minutes…half an hour…definitely not more than an hour right around closing time. He wondered if he still had a ride. His useless German driver had probably pissed off home when the disco closed and was still billing him for the time.

Freddie swore under his breath and shook the watch again. It stubbornly remained at the same time. No amount of abuse was going to upset its fine Swiss craftsmanship. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered. He wondered what he was going to do now.

He made his way around to the front of the club from the dirty back alley, his residual inebriation making him clumsy. He tripped over a half empty beer bottle and hissed as the beer sloshed over his shoe and pant leg. His skin crawled and he wanted to rip off the disgusting clothes, but he supposed he should be grateful he still _had_ his clothes. He emerged in front of the club and sat down on the curb with a moan. The road was deserted and the streetlights changing for no-one cast an eerie glow in the early morning darkness. A sudden thought had him patting down his pockets in panic, but he managed to find his passport and a couple of half marks although there was no sign of the cash that he had been equipped with before heading out. He couldn’t think of whether this was due to him spending it on the night’s activities or if the pretty blond man who had lured him off the dance floor had decided to tip himself after Freddie had passed out on the floor.

He tried to think. He could only remember flashes of events. Pulling up to the disco with Paul and John. Being plied with more free drinks than he could ever utilize, although that hadn’t stopped him from trying. A few white lines and a cascade of colorful tablets spilled out in the bathroom. Worrying about Brian and being shamefully glad that he had stayed home sick…fuck, Brian was going to kill him…he should have been back hours ago, if he could only remember why he had decided to leave the club for that grimy stairwell. He was sure that it had seemed like a fantastic idea at the time but not now, abandoned by his friends and half-sober. He couldn’t even remember much of the actually act. A sudden thought struck him. Possibly Brian wouldn’t kill him, would only give him that _look_ , sigh and go to bed. He wondered which was worse.

There might be nothing worse than falling asleep and then waking up still drunk, well, other that waking up hungover, but one expected that, at least. He tried to bully his fogged brain into coming up with some type of plan. He looked down again at the coins still clutched in his hand and then up at the telephone box on the corner. Racking his brain for phone numbers, his driver’s being out of grasp and, anyway, his German was much too shaky for early morning phone calls, he took a few stumbling steps towards the phone. He was proud to find that he was on top of it enough to remember the number of the flat he and Brian shared, although _that_ phone call was _not_ an option.

Freddie slowly dialed the only other number he could remember, waffling a bit between a three and a five before deciding to go with five. “Paul, pick up the goddamn phone,” Freddie growled under his breath as the third ring echoed too loudly in his sore head. “Paul, I swear to fucking God, if you don’t pick up the phone…” After the sixth ring, Paul’s answerphone kicked in, which at least reassured Freddie that he had got the number right but did little to solve his particular predicament.

“Fuck,” Freddie repeated. He rummaged through his pockets one more time, not sure what he thought he would find that would be of any help, but completely sure that he was out of other options. In the last pocket, he found a crumpled up cocktail napkin. He smoothed it out against the side of the payphone with a certain amount of trepidation. Sure enough, a number was scrawled across it in a hurried handwriting that seemed vaguely familiar.

Freddie hesitated. What was the worst that could happen? Best case he got an awkward ride home from a would-be suitor who might expect a liaison of some sort later on. Worse case he didn’t call or no-one answered and he froze his ass off on the streets of Munich until he was picked up by the cops or Brian started searching the city for him. He shivered. He needed to avoid that scenario at all costs.

He slowly dialed that number. His heart jumped up into his throat as the ring echoed down the line. Half-formed lines whirled through his head and then disappeared into an adrenaline rush of relief as a groggy and rough but definitely familiar voice said, “Hello?”

The voice jogged a sudden flash of memory. John, waving a threatening napkin in his face and shouting, “Promise me you will go home soon…but in case something happens…”

“Oh, God, John, thank heavens. I need a ride.”

John’s groan of recognition crackled in Freddie’s ear. He heard his friend draw a deep breath. “You better have a good _fucking_ reason for this, Freddie. I was asleep…sleeping off a lot of alcohol as you should know and I am in no condition to be driving you at all, Veronica is going to kill me if she finds out.”

It had never occurred to him that he might be able to reach someone and they would refuse to help. A burst of fear coursed through him and made him reckless. “Of course I have a good reason. My useless driver left me… _you_ left me, I woke up in some disgusting, filthy stairwell. I think I might have been _robbed_ , for fuck’s sake. I don’t have a lot of other motherfucking recourses here, John. You know what? I don’t think it is too much to ask for a little help from a friend…”

“No, you know what, Freddie?” John interrupted with an edge on his voice that surprised Freddie. “I am sick of it. I’m sick of dropping everything to come to your rescue. It was fine when we were getting into trouble together, but these days, I don’t even know where your head is anymore. You say _I_ _left_ _you_? The last I saw of you, you were getting high in the restroom with some blokes who quite rudely let me know you weren’t interested in my company. So you can get your own self out of your own damn mess for onc—”

The line went dead in the middle of John’s rant. Freddie was out of money. He slowly replaced the handset and wandered back outside to the street. He sat down on the curb heavily and buried his head in his knees. What was he going to do now? _I might as well just sit here until some kind German recognizes me and gives me a lift._ But what if the police found him first? _Oh, yeah, that would go over great with Brian._ He could imagine someone trying to break that news to the guitarist. _‘Freddie’s in the clink on suspicion of being a prostitute but the album’s going quite well, we think.’_

The Shack faced east and Freddie could just make out the brightening horizon through a narrow, dirty alleyway across the street. As the sunrise tinged the sky royal blue, rose pink and then slowly gold, Freddie made the same promise to himself that he made every hungover morning; this day was going to be different, that finally he would be able to go out and keep it together. Tonight he wouldn’t accidentally betray everyone he loved.

 _What a giant crock of shit you’re selling yourself, Fred, my boy,_ he thought and then he buried his head in his knees.

***

Brian smoked the cigarette down to the filter, until it nearly singed his fingers, concentrating on the sensation on the heat on his skin and the smoke expanding his lungs. Then he stubbed it out next to the three others in Freddie’s ash tray with a precise delicacy. He picked up the highball glass next to the ashtray with the same exacting care, ice chiming against the glass mutedly in the stillness of room.

Brian didn’t smoke as a rule. His father had smoked his whole life and it had always worried him as a child, even before much was known about that sort of thing. He found it a dirty, weak habit. _A person shouldn’t be beholden to anything_ , he thought, staring at the ashtray through the predawn darkness and the haze of smoke.

 _Not beholden to anything?_ A mocking little voice tried to twist his thoughts. _Not beholden to a nasty little chemical and not bound to a person whose touch sends your endorphins running for cover just as desperately as any addictive substance?_

He silenced the voice with a shake of his head and concentrated on fishing out another cigarette from Freddie’s pack onehanded while taking a long swallow of his drink. He would wait to light it for exactly fifteen minutes. If Brian was being honest with himself, he would admit that he felt a certain smug pleasure at being rock and roll’s ascetic. _Let them all see in thirty years who’s gone and who’s decrepit…and then see who is still around._ He was aware that his tendency for self-righteous superiority was not among his better traits, but that didn’t stop the sickly sweet satisfaction he felt every time he heard about the overdose of the bassist from some B-list hair band being shared in salacious tones by a tech in the studio.

His father would not approve of his vanity. Nothing angered the older May quite like people ‘putting on airs.’ It was why his parents still lived in the respectably middle class home of his childhood and why he had stopped sending the gifts they could have used and he could easily afford. _Although I don’t know why I let it bother me. On the scale of parental disapproval, hypothetical reactions to secret sins and gifts that I pointedly do not receive thank you notes for are pretty fucking minor._

Dizzy from the sudden rush of nicotine he wasn’t used to, Brian rubbed his face tiredly and checked his watch although he knew exactly what time it was. Five minutes past the last time he checked his watch. He reluctantly admitted that the cigarettes weren’t making him quite as dizzy as a month ago. Brian didn’t smoke as a rule. But there was another, secret rule. A rule motivated by petty vengeance and a strange and irrational sense of guilt. He only smoked when Freddie was out past whatever time he had breezily promised on his way out the door and then only one careful timekeeper’s cigarette per hour.

Lately he had been smoking rather a lot.

He thought about calling Veronica. He often did to commiserate when John and Freddie went out together and he couldn’t bring himself to tag along as some sort of brooding killjoy who drank too little and danced too cautiously. But John always came back at the time he promised and Brian couldn’t bear to hear Ronnie’s sympathetic voice saying, “Oh, Brian…John is here in bed. Hasn’t Freddie come back already?”

He felt unaccountably angry. He felt like storming through the flat breaking stuff, just this once, just to see how it felt. But underneath the hot rage was an ice cold trickle of fear. He was terrified that if he let himself fall apart, he might never get it back together again. And then, that deeper, baser fear, that he didn’t really deserve to keep the golden, winged man captive and one wrong demand would break open the cage and Freddie would fly away without a backward glance.

“God fucking damn!” he snarled at the wall. “Don’t I deserve some consideration for once in my life? Don’t I deserve to be treated as the jewel, the one who might get snatched away?”

Just as quickly as it had come, the anger faded away to be replaced by a weary sort of sadness. Freddie was drifting away, he could feel it with a grim certainty in his bones. Whatever it was about himself that he had never been able to see that had held the other man’s attention for this long was no longer enough. Frankly he was surprised that it ever was. He _wasn’t_ the one who could get snatched away. He’d known that for long enough.

Brian set down the gin and tonic again, flicked the lighter and held it to the tip of the cigarette, pulling carefully until it caught. He took a deep drag, silently mourning the times when it had all been so easy. Making music had been easy, making love had been easy. He remembered the days where he and Freddie would barely get out of bed, when everything Freddie did would delight him and every word out of his mouth was a compliment or an endearment. He had been a besotted fool, wandering around with his head in the clouds, enchanted by this beautiful creature who had the temerity, by all accounts, to love him back.

  _It wasn’t all roses, though. Keeping it secret wasn’t easy_ , that nagging voice in his head said, slyly, _telling your parents wasn’t easy._

It was true enough. In those golden halcyon days, the only fights they had were over the lengths they should go to conceal things. Freddie had chaffed at Brian’s meticulousness and worry but had gotten angry every time Brian fumbled over a probing question in an interview. _You can’t have it both ways!_ he remembered shouting at the singer, _You can’t grab my ass in public and then get angry at me when they write things in the tabloids. We have to_ work _for our privacy, that’s just the way it is._

Brian sighed, the sigh turning into a cough as he breathed too deeply. He was sick to death of being at cross purposes with the other man, tired of the fights. He tried to imagine what it would be like if he just stopped trying to hold on. To be alone again. Imagining it gave him that familiar feeling of dread and vertigo, like being perched at the top of a rollercoaster, suddenly aware that you cannot handle the drop but neither can you do anything to stop it. He found he was holding the cigarette too tightly, crushing the filter between his thumb and forefinger.

He heard footsteps in the hallway and tried to steady himself.

***

A car rumbled to a stop in front of Freddie. Fear started coursing through him and he threw his head up, only to see John in the driver’s seat, eyes bloodshot and hair a disaster, wearing possibly the most rumpled clothes Freddie had ever seen. He leaned over and cranked down the passenger window. “You came!” Freddie cried.

John let his head fall down to the steering wheel and closed his eyes. “Just get in the bloody car, Freddie.”

Freddie happily clambered up from the sidewalk and got in. “I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Of course I came. What was I supposed to do, let you get mugged or murdered on the streets of Munich?” John growled, sounding as if the prospect was a bit tempting.

“Luckily, I have no money left, so a mugging wouldn’t have come to much for the mugger.”

“Fred…” John said warningly.

“Sorry,” he replied and did his best to look contrite. John sighed and pulled the car out into the street without saying anything else. Freddie felt a rush of gratitude towards the other man although he had the nagging feeling that he was about to be on the receiving end of a massive lecture. Still, he wasn’t sure where he would be now without him in his life. _Well, I know where I would be tonight in particular. Still on that rotten curb, freezing my arse off._

 The silence stretched on uncomfortably. _For someone of John’s limited communication skills, the man can certainly convey disappointment well,_ Freddie thought. His lingering drunkenness was slowly receding, replaced by the sick gnaw of guilt and dread and the actual stomach churning discomfort of nausea. He began to think of any possible way to avoid getting in trouble with any more people, particularly one curly-headed bandmate who loomed in the back of his conscience just as he would loom over Freddie physically when he got back home. “Can you tell Brian that I went home with you after the disco closed?” he asked John with a certain bit of trepidation. “Cause the bloody driver left me?

John looked tired. “Freddie, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep lying to Brian to cover for your escapades. I _hate_ doing it. It isn’t fair to me and it isn’t fair to Brian. He’s done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, yes, because Brian is so bloody _perfect_ ,” Freddie spat the word, “isn’t he?” He was tired of John and Roger assuming that every fight was his fault, that every testy recording session was due to one of his character flaws. _Brian has flaws, believe me._

“Brian’s not perfect,” John snapped. “He’s vain and yet somehow has a total lack of self-awareness, he’s passive aggressive and a bit of a twat. But he _is_ trying to make your relationship work and has little idea of how determinedly you are trying to tear it to little bits.”

“Why do you care so much about the state of my and Brian’s relationship? If I recall, you were against it from the beginning, you told me in New Orleans that it would tear the band apart and that when word got out all of our fans would abandon us.” It was a low blow, Freddie knew, to throw John’s words from so long ago back into his face, but he didn’t care. The emotion of the night was making him reckless.

“That was seven years ago, Fred,” John said wearily. “Things have changed since I said those things. Now I know how good he is for you, despite both of your faults, how he grounds you, makes you more kind, less selfish. It would be a terrible pity to throw that all away on the cheap thrill of easy fucking.”

Freddie thought about getting offended. John’s words stung, but he was used to the bassist’s honestly by now. He supposed it was the reason he treasured the man so much as a friend. Out of all the oceans of flattery that washed up at Freddie’s feet every day, it was only the quiet compliments from the one person brave enough to call him a complete cock-up that ever seemed to matter.

“Remember how you felt on that morning in New Orleans, Fred,” John said quietly, not taking his eyes off of the road.

 _Oh, God damn you, John Deacon. Don’t make me do this._ But it was too late. Freddie felt the tears welling up in his eyes as he remembered. He had felt bright and unbreakable that morning. All the things he loved about Brian had been so fresh and immediate then, his hair in the morning, his meticulous concert to-do list that drove Roger crazy but ending up saving everyone’s ass and…on occasion…the shy, tender way he would offer up his rare shows of public affection. None of those things had anything at all to do with the rush of an illicit chemical and emotional high from an intoxicating variety of strangers bearing gifts in dirty club bathrooms. He wouldn’t be able to replace any of them if he continued fucking up and lost the man. “What can I do?!” he cried out.

John sighed again, every muscle in his body communicating the fact that he couldn’t believe Freddie could be so dense. “Freddie, you have to tell him. What’s it even worth being together if you are out every night, lying and fucking other people…”

“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “Nothing…everything. I can’t let him go, John. I love him.”

“And for some stupid reason he loves you. Although you are running around on him and he can’t come to grasps with his own emotions, much less express them to you like you need.” John shook his head. “God, what a pair of fools.”

Freddie stared out the window. The progression of foreign shops and faceless apartment buildings was becoming slightly more familiar. “John, what’s it like knowing everything?”

John snorted. “It’s a burden, I tell you.”

John took a final turn. They were a couple of blocks away from the rented flat that Freddie had come to dread the thought of. He shuddered. “Drop me off here.”

“Freddie, tell him. He will forgive you.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Freddie pulled a face. I _wouldn’t forgive me._ “I know, I know I have to—just, not tonight, okay?”

The bassist sighed and pulled the car to the curb.

“Look, thank you, Deak. You know I appreciate it, the ride, the advice…everything.”

Their eyes met across the front seat of the dimly lit car cabin. In the gloom, Freddie couldn’t read John’s expression. It almost seemed as if John’s eyes glistened a little more than normal, but Freddie chalked it up to the early glow of dawn on the horizon and the other man’s sleep deprivation. “You know I would do anythi—,” John’s voice broke. “I’m sorry I snapped. Call me anytime you are in trouble again, Fred.”

Freddie nodded and reluctantly left the warmth of John’s car, trading it for the morning chill of autumn slipping into winter and the uncertain reception at home. _Home will be as icy as the most bitter of winters_ , Freddie thought. The line would make a good song, but it occurred to him that he didn’t ever want to have to write that particular song.

The windows of their rented flat were dark. A spark of hope ignited in Freddie. _If he’s asleep, all I have to do is pretend I got in_ just _after he fell asleep. He had that bit of a cold and probably fell asleep early and of course I wanted to let him get his rest._

His thoughts had carried him through the building’s front door and up the stairwell. He hesitated at their apartment, straining to hear any noises coming from within. When he didn’t, he couldn’t stop the flash of hope that surged through him. Now he just had to get into bed without waking the guitarist.

Freddie eased open the door, as if through sheer willpower and control of speed he could prevent it from making a sound. _I’ll go to the loo first. That way if he wakes up, I can claim that I had been in bed but had to get up._ Satisfied with his plan, he slipped into the apartment, pulling the door closed behind him just as carefully. There wasn’t a sound or a light on in the rented flat. _I just might get away with_ this, he thought.

He turned away from the door and was struck by the smell of burning tobacco. _That’s odd_. Then an ember flared in the early morning darkness backed by some looming black shape that started to rise up and tower over him.

Panic swept through him followed by several half-thought out and increasingly ludicrous theories. _Oh, God, it’s a burglar. He’s killed Brian and now he’s after me…maybe it is the man from the disco…_ he’s _come to murder me…maybe…_  

The light switch was flipped and the ominous figure became nothing but Brian. To be fair, that did little to slow Freddie’s racing heart because he saw a flash of murderous rage cross Brian’s face before he corralled his expression into impassiveness. Freddie pushed a hand to his chest, as if he could calm the wild organ by physical force.

“Oh, Jesus, Brian, you nearly scared me half to death!” he said nervously, racking his brain for excuses and explanations that would make this all okay, swearing under his breath as he came up short.

Brian didn’t say anything, just slowly and tiredly reached for the crystal ashtray on the floor between his feet. It was one of Freddie’s favorites, he had gotten it in Edinburgh in a dusty antiques shop on one of their early tours. Brian snuffed out the cigarette and Freddie noted with a sinking feeling in his chest the number of others.

The silence stretching out between them was making Freddie nervous and inclined to fill it with babble. He tried to wait the other man out, knowing that if he spoke now, he was liable to say something he would regret. Brian set the ashtray down again. He seemed to be carefully considering his words as well, his lips silently framing out syllables as he rubbed the bridge of his nose between his taut thumb and forefinger.

“What’s the point in making promises that you’re never going to keep?”

It all hit him at once. Nausea and the pounding headache that was reaching a crescendo. The emotional rollercoaster of being trapped and then rescued at the club. John’s accusations that he knew deep down in the shriveled part of his soul that might have once called a conscience were true. Anger flared. _First John and now this,_ he thought, _I am getting awfully sick of being picked on tonight,_ he thought, old grievances and resentments bubbling up in his throbbing head. _Brian’s not so innocent, either…_ “Oh, that’s rich, coming from you,” he spat, feeling reckless and the most of his lingering high. “With the way you’ve been lately, you’ve no right to…”

Brian threw up his head in surprise. “The way I’ve been.”

“Distant. Cold.” Freddie knew he was going to regret this but didn’t make an effort to stop himself. “When’s the last time that we’ve had sex, Brian?”

“You’ve been out most nights, an—,”

“No, Brian,” Freddie interrupted. “We were in Japan in May. We were off for most of the summer. We haven’t had sex…and I mean proper making love, not just basically mutual fuckin’ masturbation…for at least a year and I’ve wanted to, Brian, I really hav—,”

Brian had clenched his hands into fists while Freddie was talking and now he took a long, shuddering breath, white-knuckled, and cut the other man short. “I haven’t been in love with you since _Hot Space_.”

Sometimes it was the things that you had secretly suspected that shocked you the most, Freddie reflected as he felt Brian’s words make his stomach plummet. He found himself unable to break eye contact with Brian, although he longed to; something about the disgust in those hazel eyes was more terrifying than the harshest words.

Brian slapped his hand over his mouth as if he could physically prevent himself from saying anything more.

Freddie staggered forward, the alcohol persisting in his system making him clumsy and nauseous. He shoved the taller man against the wall and some part of him was appalled at how easy it was. Brian had always been thin, but at an age where most men were settling into a sturdier build, Brian just seemed to be wasting away. He had a sudden urge to push the man again, to shake him, to hit him until he cried out or hit back—anything but this carefully guarded expression he seemed to always wear around Freddie these days.

A whiff of stale cigarettes and gin caught Freddie off guard. Brian didn’t smell anything like himself, he smelled like the sad men at the pubs during the off hours, the ones who would give you a hand job in the loo if you accepted their drink offer and it made Freddie angry.

“Maybe I don’t love you anymore either.” Freddie took steadying breath because he knew what came next. That part of him that could be so cruel knew just how to twist the knife deeper. “Maybe I don’t come home because you _bore_ me, darling.”

Brian’s eyes flicked to the side and then back to Freddie’s face, but he didn’t move or even tremble under Freddie’s hands. Freddie nearly wept in frustration. “Does it really even matter? Do you really even care? I have been _losing my mind_ , Brian, while you just sit in this flat and smoke and drink and stare.”

Brian’s lips parted and he took a ragged breath.

And then he moved. Freddie had wanted a reaction but he could have never expected this and wouldn’t have dared hope for it. Brian’s hips bucked forward and his long fingers traced the line of Freddie’s jaw until they were intertwined in the hair at the nape of Freddie’s neck. He pulled Freddie to him and kissed him and there, finally, were all the things that Freddie needed Brian to tell him.

The kiss was hard and more than a little bit angry, but that was okay. Brian should be angry and it was something of a relief that he could be angry and still want to do this. He pulled away from Freddie a fraction and then bit down hard on his lower lip. Freddie gasped and Brian captured his mouth again, tongues tangled in desperation.

Brian’s hands relaxed and swept downwards along the sides of Freddie’s neck. He shuddered as the touch sent stuttering echoes of sensation through his body. His hands rested on Freddie’s shoulders for a moment and then pushed the shorter man down to the floor, not breaking the kiss for a second.

It was something of a relief to shed his clothes, soaked as they were in old sweat, smoke and strangers’ cologne. Brian knelt between his legs and Freddie felt a thrill of anticipation as the other man pressed his knees to his chest and pulled Freddie into his lap. Lacking any sort of proper lube in the immediate vicinity, Brian went slowly, working Freddie open with his fingers using a combination of saliva and precome. Freddie found himself aching from the pleasure of it all. The duel desires for more and for it to last as long as possible warring inside of him.

“Please,” he whispered when he could take Brian’s delving torture no more. Brian’s eyes flicked up to Freddie’s face and there was a rawness in his hazel eyes that made Freddie go pale. Brian entered him in one relentless thrust, slow and yet far from gentle in his inexorableness.

Freddie gritted his teeth and rode the wave of pleasure-pain as his body adjusted to the intrusion. Brian began to move, the sinews in his arms and legs jumping as he supported Freddie’s weight. Freddie loved the helplessness of this position. He loved the view.

Brian arched back and gasped, exposing his pale throat. Freddie thought of the young man he had fallen in love with all those years ago. Freddie had loved his self-conscience naïveté. It made him long to show Brian all the things he had discovered for himself, the way bodies could be made to sing too. It made him believe that they could discover new ways together. He loved that even still, after all this time, Brian seemed almost _surprised_ by his orgasm.

Brian came quietly, his brow knitted in concentration and his hand tight on Freddie’s cock. Freddie knew that he could make Brian scream for him when conditions were just right, not like this with Brian in control. Honestly, he treasured these moments more, marveling at how little it took to turn him into putty in this man’s hand. Just a bit of force, only a hint of possessiveness.

Brian was looking down at Freddie’s cock with all the ownership that Freddie could have hoped for. A couple strokes with his elegant, long-fingered hand was all it took with that expression on his face and then Freddie was coming all over his own stomach. He felt like some blockage deep inside of him had finally broken loose, something that he had been desperately going about all the wrong ways of finding had been handed to him when he least expected it. He was breathing hard and fast, his breath on the verge of a sob. _You complete and utter fool_ , he told himself. _Everything you sinned so much to find was right here all along._

He opened his eyes and looked up at Brian. Brian was watching the splattered pool of come on Freddie’s chest with an odd expression. Then he pulled away and said, “Oh, Freddie.”

Freddie closed his eyes. There was such terrible emotion in Brian’s word that he could barely stand it. He sounded too angry for it to be affection, too afraid for anger and too destitute for fear. Freddie wondered if this was what love sounded like. At one time in his life, he would have declared himself the world’s expert on love. He could barely recognize that person as himself. Brian carefully lowered himself to the floor, lying on his back next to Freddie.

Freddie’s breathing slowed and in that moment of calm after orgasm he thought about what John had told him to do. He knew John was right, of course he was, but he couldn’t shake the certainty that telling Brian the truth would mean losing him.

 _What would I do…if I was in his shoes and he confessed to cheating on me?_ The surge of jealousy was immediate and intense. Still, he didn’t know if when the chips were down, if he could actually summon the courage to walk out that door. Sometimes he pictured Brian with other men, out of some sort of masochistic drive. It never failed to leave him feeling sick and shaken. _Then why do you do it to him, you little piece of shit?_ a nasty little part of his mind whispered insidiously.

“Brian, is it…is all of this…is it worth it?” Freddie hated the quaver he could hear in his voice.

“The sex was good, if that’s what you meant.” Brian’s voice was full of bitterness and Freddie could only speculate what dark paths his thoughts had been wandering down while Freddie was occupied with his own.

“No, that’s not wha—look, Brian, I hate it when I don’t treat you right, I hate it when we fight. But it all must be worth it in the end or else why would we keep coming back…”

Brian sucked in his breath as if in pain. “You mean you don’t know?” he said with hurt wonder. “Freddie, I didn’t mean it. What I said before. I love you more than I could ever hope to express. I will _always_ come back.” The force in his voice took Freddie aback. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Brian speak so harshly.

Freddie pressed his hand against the carpet, watching the richly colored fibers shift and bend under his fingers. The silken touch of them was real, solidly physical. He thought of the aching pull he felt when he thought about Brian walking away. Sometimes that felt more real than a touch, but never in the heat of the moment, never when he needed it to the most. “I love you too, Brian. I’m sorry things have been so awful lately. Munich hasn’t been good for us. Things will be better once we get back home and get this album out.”

“Yeah,” Brian said and the tremble under his breath could be due to longing or doubt. “It will be better to be back home.”

Freddie pulled Brian closer, wondering if the guitarist really believed his assurances. Freddie wasn’t quite sure either of them did.

***

John drove home slowly, half due to his unfamiliarity with the Munich streets and half because the alcohol in his system was making him clumsy. And perhaps if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t quick to arrive back at his temporary home because he knew that all that was waiting for him was more of the same shit.

Tomorrow would be another awkward and fruitless recording session, all of them nervously watching Freddie falling apart. _No, that wasn’t right_ , he corrected himself, _it isn’t just Freddie_. Brian had barely smiled or talked to anyone in weeks, Roger was in the middle of a messy (and loud) break u—getting back to—well…in the middle of a _something_ …with Dominique and they were all drinking way more than was healthy. _I suppose that Freddie is just having his problems more dramatically than the rest of us._ John snorted and turned down a street on a route that was slowly becoming second nature as these early morning trips between his and Freddie’s place piled up. _Hmmph, typical._

He supposed it was rather all his fault. Or if not his fault, per se, then his responsibility in as far as John had the power to stop Fred from doing what he was doing and he hadn’t done it. He was selfish, he thought, not one to shy away from self-criticism. He liked the clubs, liked the dancing and the anonymity of the darkness and the pounding beat. In a blaring loud disco, there was no pressure to make small talk and no kids demanding all your attention. John loved his family more than anything but having to watch over Freddie made an awfully convenient excuse to his guilty conscience.

It couldn’t go on like this. He _had_ warned Freddie what a relationship inside the band would do to them all. He could still remember the waring expressions on his friend’s face when he took him aside that sober morning in New Orleans. _God, seven years ago but it feels like a lifetime_. Freddie had been nearly alight with fresh infatuation and it had been all John could manage to deflate that joy in his dearest friend. _Don’t do this, Fred. Even if it works out, you’ll be pitting one half of the band against the other, forcing Roger and I to take our expected sides in your lovers’ squabbles. And if, God forbid, it all goes sour…better bands than us have been ruined for less._

He couldn’t have told and still couldn’t tell Freddie why he was so worried about Roger.

 _Jesus Christ, why couldn’t I have joined a band like Rush or something_. They probably sat around quite calmly, discussing odd time signatures and literature, most definitely not fucking each other at all.

At least John had Veronica and the boys…at least the band was intact for all the fractures and at least he still had his best friend, Freddie. No matter what, as long as he had those three joys, nothing could happen that John couldn’t handle.


	2. Chapter 2

**April 1986**

_I hang my head and I advertise_

_A soul for sale or rent_

_I have no heart, I'm cold inside_

_I have no real intent_

 

John Deacon yawned hugely while trying to read the close text on the sheet a harried-looking secretary had handed him. His eyes felt as gritty and raw as if he had spent the day on a windy beach, making reading the already dry document nearly impossible. He rubbed them and tried again. He had been up far too late last night with the band and the studio crew, celebrating another completed album and the night before that he had had a two-year-old with a stomach flu and a strong determination to time his bouts of nausea to the interval in which his parents changed his sheets. Or was it the other way around? John blinked in disbelief that he couldn’t for the life of him remember. It was like forgetting what clothes you were wearing until you looked down to check. Whole days shouldn’t get as scrambled up as those half-awake moments spent dressing. He sighed. Whatever had happened, it had been a while since he had gotten decent sleep and he was questioning the wisdom of whoever had planned a seven in the morning meeting to hammer out venue details for the fast approaching tour.

“Alright, everyone,” Jim said, taking a seat and shuffling through a few papers. “Let’s get this done with as quickly as possible. John, you want to start since you called this little shindig?”

 _Oh, Christ, it was me_. He cleared his throat and scanned the page of notes on calls to various promoters again, racking his head for details. He again cursed his need to be so in control of everything. His bandmates were probably still warm and cozy in their beds. _Well, probably not cozy_ , he reflected, remembering the amount of alcohol he, Freddie and Roger had managed to put away last night, if indeed it was last night, _but at least in their beds._ It wasn’t as if their organization lacked for competent people who were more than capable of proof-reading contracts with promoters. But to be honest, the thought of letting go of the responsibility gave him a slightly panicky sensation akin to losing his balance. It was worth battling down his hangover to avoid that.

“So,” he cleared his throat again and took a drink of water, the pounding in his head receding a bit. “All the German dates are confirmed…and the Spain ones as well. Umm…they want to add a second night in Leiden, I don’t think that will be a problem. Oh, and, Goldsmith wants to add another U.K. date ‘cause those concerts are selling very well, but it conflicts a bit with the Belgian festival we agreed to…”

“If I have my druthers, I’d say wiggle out of the festival,” the head of the lighting company chimed in. “Wrangling equipment at those things is always a nightmare.”

Another day with the possibility of his own bed at the end of the night rather than festival chaos sounded extraordinary. “Jim?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“I’ll call up their people…I don’t think we are set in stone yet and it would be nice to end up at home.” By the dark circles under the manager’s eyes and his sigh, it seemed that he too was thinking of his bed.

“Okay, good,” John said, making a note to himself to call Goldsmith. “Well, then, I think we can say the tour dates are set…album is cut…we are making real progress, people.” John smiled a little bit to himself, warming up slowly as the familiar joy of making a to do list fall into place seeped through him.

“I’ve been working a bit on the promotion side…here is a tentative list of interviews and appearances and such,” Jim chimed in, sliding copies across the table.

“Freddie will be overjoyed,” John said dryly, looking over the list. It was a good start, but there were a few that he knew should be added and a few that would not get past the temperamental frontman, no matter what. And with that, they were in the swing of things and for the rest of the meeting, John nearly forgot about his lingering exhaustion and headache.

They steadily worked through the morning until it was determined that no more progress could happen until calls had been made and contracts signed. John thanked everyone and thought about what needed to be done at home. _I should probably call Freddie_ , he thought distractedly, half-formed worries and half-remembered snatches of conversations from last night stewing in the back of his mind.

“Hey, John?” Jim called as the others filed out, sorting some loose papers into folders and not looking up. “Can you stay a minute…there’s something I want to talk to you about,” Jim ended with a small, huffing sigh and raised his eyes to meet John’s. His brow was creased with worry and John had a sinking sensation that he knew what topic the manager was about to bring up, as though he had been reading John’s mind.

“It’s about Freddie, isn’t it?” he asked, with the dread that was attending that name more and more.

Jim cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “Well, I was talking with Freddie the other day…that is I have been reading some stuff about, ah, well…” Jim faltered to a stop and looked at John helplessly.

“What did he say to you, Jim?” John asked tiredly.

“I asked him if he was being careful.” Jim was still avoiding John’s eyes.

“And?”

“He said he’s been doing everything with everyone.”

“Jesus,” John swore under his breath. He hadn’t been sure that Freddie had quite admitted to himself what he was doing, but if he was admitting it to friends, things might be more out of hand than he had counted on.

“That’s not just Freddie’s hyperbole, is it?” Jim asked with cautious hopefulness.

John sighed. “No, I don’t think so. It was worse in Munich than now, but it hasn’t stopped.”

They were both quiet a moment as they tried not to remember Munich. It was around then John started having difficulty holding a normal conversation with Brian and meeting his eyes. It was perhaps kinder that he had been avoiding him since. _Kinder? Well, that’s a laugh. More fucking cowardly more like._

“You have to say something to him, Deak.”

“Jim…”

“You know he listens to you. Or at least more than he listens to the rest of us, which isn’t at all. It was one thing when his behavior was just hurting the people he loves, that was none of my business. But now everything’s changed, this disease…” Jim swallowed hard and looked away. He continued in a quieter voice. “Now he might be hurting…destroying…the band and the band _is_ my business.”

“I’ve told him to stop. He’s agreed. And then nothing’s changed.” _I’ve told Roger to stop, hell, I’ve even told myself to stop, to stop meddling…caring…whatever. Fat lot of good that’s done._ John scrubbed his hands against his face. _Maybe I should tell Brian to_ start _doing something…anything._ “I don’t think he can.”

“I don’t expect miracles, John. I just want you to get him tested.”

The blood roared in John’s ears. “Tested?”

“Nobody is saying very much right now, it’s all very hush hush. But…there are rumors of people in the circles Freddie’s been in testing positive. We need to know. _He_ needs to know, John. Hell, the people he’s going to sleep with need to know.”

John felt an overwhelming sense of doom, as if their fate had already been sealed long before they knew to worry and now, too late, they were all getting worked up trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. “Alright, I will do it,” he said miserably to Jim.

John turned to go.

“Oh, and John?” Jim said. John hesitated, his hand pressed flat against the door. “I know this isn’t fair to ask you…I mean, it isn’t your responsibility or place…”

John didn’t want to hear what the manager was about to say, because he had been quite successful, thank you very much, at preventing himself from even thinking it. _Well, in for a penny, in for a pound and all that._  “Out with it, Jim.”

“Well, Brian should be tested too.”

John closed his eyes.

_The morning after one of these parties euphemistically and rather optimistically called ‘promotional events’ always comes with a harsher, more blinding light than normal. Even still, Freddie Mercury shines brighter, his dark eyes sparking with an emotion that John could put a name to if he wasn’t desperately hoping their lives weren’t about to be complicated by that little four letter word._

_Fred is the only one. Roger is sour and stewing over more than his hangover and John feels itchy and tense as if a brewing storm is descending upon them all. Only Brian comes close, glowing with the flickering cautious hope of an optimistic pessimist. John notes how Brian flushes and preens just a bit whenever Freddie’s eye lands on him. Roger sees it as well and his glower grows darker, if possible._

_The conversation around the breakfast table goes about as well as can be expected with that combination of moods._

_“It’s nothing, love. Clowning around. Oh, and Roger’s being a bit of a prick.” John glances at Roger, but he doesn’t seem to be in any mood to laugh off Freddie’s sass._

_“Well, I’m surprised he is even alive after last night.” Brian’s voice is light and, as usual, oblivious to the undercurrents of emotion swirling around his two bandmates._

_“Fuck off, Brian,” Roger moans into the table._

_“Don’t talk to him that way.” Freddie snaps. “It’s your own fault if you feel like shit anyway.”_

_“Hmm, I guess I wasn’t distracted by all the asses I was signing and got a little carried away with the drinking.” John sighs. He had been meaning to speak to Freddie about Brian anyway and carting him away from the scene of a scuffle seems as good an opener as any._

_“Why, you little…” Roger lifts his head just as Freddie takes a step to round the table._

_“Stop fighting like little children.” John interrupts, unable to stop irritation from creeping into his voice. “And believe me, I know all about children fighting.” John stands up and grabs Freddie’s arm. “I need to talk to you.” Freddie pulls his arm away but John catches it again. “Now.” His tone brooks no argument._

_John spares a glance back at the table as he marches Freddie off. Brian has a vague, faraway smile on his face and Roger is staring at the open throat of Brian’s shirt with a desolate intensity._ Oh, Christ on toast, we are all well and truly fucked here.

_He gets Fred into the hotel restaurant’s coat closet before turning to face the by now spitting mad frontman._

_“I’m not a child, John,” he complains, anger sparking in his dark eyes. “You can’t just send me off to the naughty corner…”_

_“Shut up, Fred, and listen to me. This is about Brian.”_

_“What about Brian?” Freddie’s expression was reflexively defensive._

_John shakes his head at how willfully dense the other man could be. “You have to be careful.”_

_“You’ve never cared about my relationships before.” Freddie’s tone borders on petulant and he distractedly twists the cuff of somebody’s fur coat between his fingers._

_“Fred, you know this won’t end like any of the others,” John wants to snatch the coat out of his hands, wants to shake some sense into him. “It can’t possibly, not with the band, not with how Brian is…”_

_Freddie finally really looks at him, frowning slightly. “Do you know that he was a virgin when we first made love?”_

Made love. _What a perfectly Freddie way of putting it. John knows it hadn’t been love then, he isn’t even completely sure it is love now, although the end effect would be the same. “Yes, I did know that.” John tries to get his diatribe back on track. “It’s part of the reason that…”_

 _“Who gives you license to manage all of our lives? John Deacon, he’s so_ perfect _, he is the_ perfect _judge of to what exact degree you are fucking up and he won’t hesitate to fill you in. I bet you were lecturing Roger on his drinking in the loo before I showed up, weren’t you, Deaky?”_

_This was John’s least favorite side of Freddie, catty and maliciously intelligent. Picking up on the exact thing that you were hoping no-one would notice. “Never mind Roger, Freddie.” Only way to fight fire was with fire. “You and Brian can never work. It’s just the way it is, like oil and water, he will give in when you need him to push back, he will hide what he’s feeling when you most need to be reminded, he will value loyalty and consistency where you value passion and spontaneity…I could go on. And in the process you will destroy the one thing that can ever bring you two together, the band.”_

_Freddie had been drawing a breath for his next retort but halfway through John’s speech, he lets it go. His eyes seem unnaturally glossy and for a moment John thinks that maybe he is wrong. Maybe this is the real deal, maybe intervening now is as big of a mistake as Julie made when she told her brother with all the arrogance of an eighteen-year-old not to marry his pregnant girlfriend. John thinks about how that made him feel back then. Pretty much the way reflected in the warring emotions streaked out across his friend’s face. Maybe Freddie is right about his meddling._

_“Freddie…” he says, trying to push through to the other man, to where he will actually listen.  “Don’t do this, Fred. Even if it works out, you’ll be pitting one half of the band against the other, forcing Roger and I to take our expected sides in your lovers’ squabbles. And if, God forbid, when it all goes sour…better bands than us have been ruined for less.”_

_“No.” Freddie takes a breath, draws himself up to his full height. “You listen to me. I know you think that you know the state of my heart better than me but you don’t, Deak. I love him. I am going to make this work because I deserve to be happy. I deserve love and nobody out there is going to get in between Brian and I. No-one.”_

John remembered Brian, holding Laura soon after John and Veronica brought her home from the hospital. John had searched his face but there was nothing there of light, neither harsh and revealing nor jubilant and sanguine. Instead, there were deep shadows of strange wistfulness and regret. He felt a twinge of the same that he had never felt close enough to the other man to ask him what he felt or why. Veronica must have sensed something as well, because she had abruptly reached forward and grasped Brian’s arm.

_“You know you can come by anytime you like, Brian? The kids love your visits…”_

_Brian looks up from the baby girl and smiles his wife. “Of course, Ronnie. I love it too. It almost makes up for…” He inhales sharply and doesn’t complete the sentence as Freddie walks back from the bar with a fresh glass of champagne._

_“Darling, call me when she’s old enough to go shopping. God, babies are boring, aren’t they?”_

John opened his eyes and turned to face Jim. The manager looked worried and guilty, fine lines cropping up between his eyebrows. “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, Jim.”

***

“That dinner was brilliant, Ronnie,” Freddie said as he brought his plate to the kitchen. He stood there, shifting from foot to foot in a vague urge to be helpful. Veronica always managed to bring out the worst in him.

She swatted him out of the way with a dish towel. “Are you trying to do the dishes, Fred? Are you sure you’re feeling okay? When’s the last time you picked up a scrub brush?”

“I will have you know that I do lots of chores,” Freddie rejoined, letting theatric indignation creep into his voice. “Chores like figuring out the house cleaners’ schedules. Like shopping for household essentials such as new china. Chores like getting Brian to remember to take a break to eat…”

Veronica’s laughing face fell a bit at the mention of the erstwhile guitarist. “Why didn’t Brian come tonight? John wouldn’t say.”

Freddie looked out the window above the sink in John and Veronica’s kitchen. The boys and Laura were taking full advantage of the fading light and spring’s first blush of warm weather, having discharged their duty to vegetables and adult company. The draped branches of a cherry tree in full bloom framed the scene with near saccharine perfection. The view suited Freddie’s mood not at all.

“He’s at his parents’. He’s…” _He’s fucked off when things get hard, like usual. There’s been one squabble too many and now who the fuck knows when I’ll see him again._ “Well, his dad’s been sick and he thought that a visit might be good.”

“You didn’t want to go?”

“Ha!” Freddie sputtered in surprise at the suggestion. “Well, no. That would _not_ be good.” Freddie set down the wine glass he had been nervously toying with and looked at Veronica with a self-deprecating twist of his lips. “I can’t possibly be the only one who doesn’t get along with my…inlaws, I suppose, of a sort.”

“Well, John’s parents are much like he is. Polite…reserved, nearly to a fault. Loathe to criticize out loud, but not afraid to judge. So, no, I suppose you are right, Freddie. I wouldn’t want to spend much longer than a weekend,” Ronnie said completely straight-faced.

Freddie managed a half-chuckle. He marveled to himself at how Veronica could always give him a more optimistic disposition. Lord knew that that there had been no guarantee that he would have gotten on with his friend’s wife, just look at the way he squabbled with each and every one of Roger’s women. _The fact that you are both sleeping with the same man has absolutely nothing to do with that, no indeed, he just dates a series of harpies…_

Veronica broke into his thoughts, a faint crease on her brow. “Fred, John wanted to talk to you in his office after dinner. He, well, he should probably explain it all at once.”

Freddie raised his eyebrows in surprise. He would never get used to the way that John and Veronica would tag team people from time to time to get them to do what they wanted. He was pretty sure he and Brian never did that. _Just one more piece of evidence of how out of sync you are. Just more proof that this is never going to work out._

“Oh, alright. Well, thanks again for the dinner, Ronnie.” _Shut up,_ he told himself firmly. _I don’t need to hear this from myself as I am probably about to hear it from Deak._ The hallway to John’s office-slash-workroom was longer and darker that Freddie remembered and gave him a distinct vibe of being sent to the headmaster’s office. He cracked open the door with more than a little trepidation.

John had a news magazine spread out in front of him. Every upside down, Freddie recognized it. He had read the article himself two days ago. He took a deep breath.

“John.”

“Freddie…” John paused, pursed his lips and then continued. “Freddie, I’ve been reading…”

 _Oh, God, this was not what I was expecting. He has no_ right _to ambush me with this._ Through the roaring in his head he tried his best to stall. “No, John, wait…”

John shook his head with a violent jerk. His lips were pressed into a thin line and it was clear that he was determined to get through his piece as quickly and with as few interruptions as possible. “Well, it’s just that…I think you should be more careful.”

“John, I…”

“And I think that you should get tested.”

The sentence fell and lay between them like a dead snake, loosely curled around the word that Freddie had been trying with all his might to not think.

“No…no, I—I…” Freddie felt a bit faint and John looked up at him, concern in his eyes. Freddie tried to articulate just why the thought of doing what John asked filled him with such dread. “John, we all die sometime. I want to live as each day is my last, but _knowing_ which is my last…”

“Freddie, think!” John cut him off as though he had been prepared for this argument, a bit of color high on his cheeks. “Think what it would do to your friends, the band, Brian…” he took a breath and lowered his voice again. “You don’t have to act like it is too late. Think what it would do to _me_ to lose you just because you couldn’t be arsed to give a shit. To deny yourself one second of pleasure. It would wreak me, Fred. Think about that and then maybe reconsider what you are doing to yourself.”

“I—I’m afraid,” Freddie admitted, softly, finally. “I’m afraid of what I might find out.”

“If yo—well, that is, if you are…you could pass it to Brian, Freddie.”

Blood roared in Freddie’s ears and he sat down.

John looked more than a little nonplussed. “Surely you…I mean, you must have thought of that, Fred.”

“No, I…” Freddie fought back raw panic. Brian was so pure, so unsullied. It was what he hated about the man, it was what he desired and brought him back lusting after every emotional silent treatment, after every non-fight. There was some depraved desire to mark that virginal soul, to drag the angel down to earth with the rest of the mere mortals. Somewhere in all that Freddie had always kept his torrid nights in hell a place apart, losing sight of the most obvious way he could mar the other man.

“Freddie,” John said gently, timeworn concern creeping into the line between his eyebrows. “Please promise me that you will think about it.”

Freddie felt that jittery lightness of nerves, something he hadn’t felt since his first days of preforming, since making an explicit move on a man too oblivious to pick up on his subtler overtures. “I—I promise.”

He got up to go. He didn’t think that he could stand one more second of gazing into the worried grey of John’s eyes.

As he crossed the threshold of John’s office, he heard John shift in his chair. “Oh, and Fred? Please remember, time isn’t on your side.”

On the drive home, sprawled out across the back seat, Freddie cast an arm over his face and thought, _God, my life is over_. He had to laugh bitterly as it occurred to him that as often as he had said those words, for once he wasn’t being melodramatic.

*******

“Let’s go shopping.”

Phoebe looked up at him, incredulous, and slowly set down the phone he had been dialing. “I thought you were going to go take a nap. We finally got the final tour list and I was just about to call all the hotels to see if they can accommodate your…requirements.”

“Oh,” Freddie thought for a moment. He really did need some new shoes, but he supposed that the hotels were as good a distraction as any. “Oh, dear, that’s fine. I will help.”

Phoebe’s eyebrows went even further towards his hairline. “You’ll help?!”

Freddie felt a bit offended by his assistant’s tone. “Yes, _I’ll help_. I can be helpful…constructive…practical…all that stuff, here,” he handed a pen to Phoebe, gesturing too forcefully and knocking over the fruit bowl between them on the counter.

“Oh, for the love of…” Phoebe said as they scrambled to gathering up the rolling oranges and apples. “Just stop. Here, let me do it.”

Fruit corralled, Phoebe went to pick up the phone again, glaring at Freddie suspiciously. Freddie did his best to look contrite. As his assistant dialed and then started to outline the things Freddie expected in a first class lodging establishment, Freddie picked up the pen again and started doodling on the notepad lying on the countertop. _No need to add anything to Phoebe’s plate right now_ , he told himself, _not while he’s so busy with this._

It wasn’t until Phoebe had hung up the phone that Freddie realized his absentminded drawing had quite obscured any writing that might have been on the paper. Phoebe reached for it to dial the next number and then stopped short.

“Freddie!” Phoebe finally snapped. “For God’s sake, just _what_ is the matter with you?”

Freddie slowly set down the notepad. He felt like a child caught out doing the dishes in a desperate attempt to avoid the school project his parents had been nagging about. He took a deep breath, fighting the urge to put it off one more day, to tell Phoebe that he’s worried about the cats or that he had had an argument with Brian. _One more day. One more day. Just…anything, just one more day._

Some better angel of Freddie’s nature threw the memory into his mind, of worry in John’s stormy eyes. _“Think what it would do to_ me _to lose you.”_

“Do you think…ah, I don’t quite kno—and please don’t ask anything, or act…well, that is…do you think there is some place I could go to have some medical tests, without it getting out to the tabloids?”

Phoebe’s eyes never left Freddie’s as he hung up the phone. For a moment, they simply stared at each other and the miserable sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that Freddie had assumed was dread of saying what he just said didn’t go away. It grew until he thought that he might be actually sick, but just as he was about to get up and bolt for the bathroom, Phoebe spoke. “Yes.”

*******

Freddie had been to a doctor’s office before, of course. In many ways this is no different…it shouldn’t be different…the fluorescent lighting betrays the feeble attempts of the framed landscape prints and dusty house plants to make the waiting room more homey, the faint smell of gauze and rubbing alcohol, the copy of NME that was four months out of date. Freddie supposed this was the rare time to be grateful he hadn’t been on the cover of that rag since ’76. The tabloids were another matter and Freddie gave them a quick once over before adjusting his hat and sunglasses, feeling conspicuous and desperate.

In other ways, subtle ways, everything was completely different. At an OBGYN, Freddie imagined the atmosphere would be charged with nervous excitement, the A&E would be filled with immediate and defined panic and the snotty brats running around the pediatrician’s office would leave no doubt as to their complaint.

Here, it was the elusive, pervasive sense of dread that crept out from under the door separating the waiting and examination rooms, flowing over the patients, making them keep their eyes down to avoid human contact, that defined the emotion of the place. It was the fear of the unknown, the unknowable, fear that death was stalking all of them and they would never really know how or why and the only insight of when was a low persistent whisper in the back of their heads saying, soon…soon…soon.

The actual exam, after facing down what demons lingered in that waiting room, was anticlimactic and abrupt. A brusque nurse asked him some cursory questions, questions she no doubt already knew his answers to and then drew blood. Her gloved fingers rested bruising on his arm and she touched him no longer than necessary.

Freddie rode home in the car, feeling miserable and alone, no closer to an answer than he ever had. He wished he could be with Brian. He wished that he could curl up in the warm space between Brian’s hip and shoulder with the gentle acceptance the other man used to offer so easily. He knew that at some point he had thrown that comfort away with both hands and he couldn’t quite remember his reasons why.

Garden Lodge was empty when he got back. Or as empty as a house with five cats and four staff members could be. Freddie refused Phoebe’s offer of tea and headed up to the bedroom, trying to accomplish through sleep what he could never seem to in his waking hours. He dreamt of forgiveness and honesty, long walks through the sunshine and endless laughter.

*******

“It’s for you, Freddie.”

“Ah, tell them to leave a message or you handle it, dear. Not in the mood to talk right now.”

“I can’t. They will only talk to you.”

“Oh… _oh_. Well, then, give it here, I guess.” Freddie reached for the receiver, instantly lightheaded and dizzy. In a flash, it seemed as though all the blood had gone out of his hands, leaving them numb and alien. He nearly dropped the phone as soon as he grabbed it, staring down at his stranger hands. “Hello?” his voice sounded strangled and high. He cleared his throat. “Yes, hello?”

The nurse started speaking, but there was a roaring in his head like static on a badly tuned television set and he couldn’t quite make out the words. “I’m s—sorry,” he stammered. “What was th—that?”

Again the words blurred and crashed together, but here and there he could just make them out. “…Bulsara…so sorry…positive…”

_Positive. And Brian is stretched out beneath him, the pretty juxtaposition of his height and his fragile slimness nearly making him cry from the perfection of it all. He pushes and it’s too much…ah, too fast…but Brian arches back and just cries for more, strong and willing and every inch of him Freddie’s._

_Positive. The crowd pours out from his feet like the crashing waves of some endless, cacophonous ocean and all of them are singing his words back to him at the top of their lungs. He feels a primal rush, he feels on top of the world, he never wants this to end. He sees the years of his life unfolding before him, endless, and always a stage, always an audience, and always…always…a dark guitarist behind him._

_Positive. Roger tastes like the cheap scotch in the bottle they have been sharing, smoky and harsh. He too burns as Freddie swallows him down. He is sunlight and fast cars throwing gravel on dusty back roads and easy women in dimly lit dive bars. He is everything that Brian is not. Freddie takes him and knows, in that moment, that he will never be able to let him go._

_Positive. The stranger’s eyes are adoring, star struck, and if his mouth is a little slack and those eyes a bit glazed over from the pills they have been sharing, Freddie convinces himself that it doesn’t matter. He tells himself that he deserves this, what is it all for, after all, the prying press, the long days on the road, the tedium, if he can’t pull a pretty boy in a club to blow off steam? He is a rock star, goddammit, and it is New York, 1984, and the night stretches on with no hint of the coming of the accusatory dawn._

Freddie dropped the phone and crumpled in on himself, clutching his suddenly pounding head. He realizes, abruptly, agonizingly, that he hasn’t really ever been positive about anything in his entire life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**May 1986**

_The slate will soon be clean_

_I'll erase the memories_

_Was it all wasted_

_All that love?_

 “Don’t fucking touch me! Are you fucking suicidal or something?!”

John was on the other side of the oval bar when he heard the commotion, good-naturedly fending off his own suitor. The pub was a dingy and unassuming place in Kensington, nestled between two, better kept shopfronts and only patronized by those who knew what they were looking for. Unlike the flashy night clubs designed to provide a chemical and sex-fueled good time, this was a place for day drinking, a place where deeply closeted men could relax a little bit for a while and, yes, maybe even take some company round the corner to the by the hour motel. It wasn’t where you made memories, it was a place you went to forget yourself, if even for a little while.

John didn’t mind keeping Freddie company at such places. He liked the dancing at the clubs they went to in the night, the way that the nearly overwhelming volume of the music drove out not only other people’s words but your own thoughts from your head. He went with Freddie there not to score, drugs or company, but to shed the tight straightjacket of his self-possession. He enjoyed it. But sometimes he wanted to get lost in his thoughts and to dwell on them the way he dwelled on their laughable ‘top shelf’ whiskey. He sometimes thought to wonder what Freddie got out of this place.

At the moment, the front man was doing his best to destroy the carefully constructed anonymity of the place. A gin and tonic lay splashed across the bar between Freddie and a man who seemed far too young to be buying drinks for anyone at such a place. The barkeep was frowning and then John saw him exchange a glance with a heavily muscled man leaning in a shadowed corner near the jukebox. He took that as his cue to do what he could to avoid the both of them getting tossed out of the joint onto their ears.

He slid off his barstool and weaved his way around the bar. On the he muttered to the barkeep, “Look, it’s okay, I’ll take care of it.” The man raised his eyebrows skeptically, but shrugged at the bounced and went back to smearing greasy water around chipped pint glasses.

John slipped between Freddie and his would-be suitor before either of them noticed him approaching. He shoved some cash across the bar to the man and then told him firmly, “If you leave quietly, there’s another 50 quid in it for you.” The man paused mid-shout and reconsidered. Then he nodded sharply, took the money and left.

John rounded on his friend. “Freddie! What in the hell is going on?”

Freddie stared him, panting from the exchange and surprised to find John in front of him. “I…I just…”

“You’re going to get us kicked out. What in the world did he do?”

“Nothing,” Freddie said slowly, still acting in shock. “He did nothing. It’s…well, it was me. I just didn’t want anyone around…or touching me, because I—I’m…” Freddie cast his eyes desperately around the bar.

“Fred,” John said seriously, trying to catch his glance and ignore the growing feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Fred, what’s wrong?”

The singer took a deep breath. “I got my test results back this morning.” His eyes skittered across John desperate gaze like a water beetle.

“Oh.” John sat down heavily on a barstool. “Oh.”

“Positive,” He spat bitterly. “You were right, everyone was right about me.” Something seemed to break loose in the other man. “Oh, God!” he cried and the fragile web of bravado and self-important bluster that seemed to have been all that was holding Freddie upright fell apart like shards of fine china scattered on the ground. He collapsed forward onto the bar and broke down completely.

John acted instinctually to the stimulus of seeing his crying friend and leaned over to hold him. He knew that Freddie’s words had not quite sunk in, that he wasn’t dealing with them yet, but that was okay. He always needed to sort through strong emotions in private, the same way Freddie needed to do it in public, having a noisy breakdown in a pub in the middle of London.

“I’ve taken three showers since I heard. I just can’t seem to get the feel of those men up off my skin.” Freddie shuddered in his arms. “I’m tired and I’m scared and I don’t want people to look at me like I am some freak or worse, some poor pathetic soul.”

John made a noncommittal noise and kept rubbing Freddie’s shoulders. He found that it was best to interrupt these word flows only if asked a direct question or if Freddie said something completely egregious.

“You shouldn’t be touching me either,” Freddie said between gasping sobs. “I’m dirty, John, and defiled. A pariah. A leper. An out—.” _That’s my cue._

“Hush,” John said firmly. He grabbed Freddie’s shoulders and held him upright so he could catch the other man’s eyes. “Freddie, I love you. You are my best friend, you are the godfather of my children and nothing, _nothing_ , is going to change that. I am never going to be scared of you, I am never going to pity you and I am never going to leave you. You understand? We can get through this together.”

“John…”

“Besides, this isn’t anything as scary as that time in Liverpool when we could pay the lighting crew and they rounded up a bunch of their buddies to beat the shit out of us in the alley…” The levity in John’s voice sounded forced to him, but he soldiered on, hoping Freddie wouldn’t notice.

Freddie frowned but John could see a hint of that old sparkle coming back as he remembered. “Oh, Jesus, and it turned out that Roger had fucked the one guy’s sister…”

“And Brian of all people talked us out of it because he had that cousin in Warrington who played bridge with one of their mums!”

Freddie’s laughter cut off and he buried his head in his arms again. Muffled, he said, “Ai, fuck me, _Brian_. What am I going to do about Brian?”

John thought quickly. “You want to keep him?” he asked carefully, afraid to say what he had been thinking for a while now, that Freddie didn’t much act like he wanted to keep the curly haired guitarist around and it might be merciful on both their parts to get it over swiftly.

“Yes! I mean, yes.” Freddie raised his head, his eyes red and his face tear-streaked, but looking determined. “I know I’ve been a shitty boyfriend…a shitty person. But, I can’t…every time I picture him walking away, John, it feels like he is tearing my very guts out and taking them with him.”

“Fred,” John said tiredly. “You can’t do a damn thing about what Brian is going to do. You can only control what you are going to do to try and convince him to stay. And, Fred? Just a hint, what you’ve been doing so far isn’t working.”

*******

John left the bar without a clear destination in mind and with a bottle of cheap scotch picked up from the corner store next door. His head seemed to be filled with incoherent buzzing and his thoughts simmered and dissipated, drowned out by the panicked noise. He wondered what was of greater magnitude, his surprise at Freddie’s confession or his surprise at his own shock. _You knew this was coming_. He shook his head mutely, taking a sharp right turn in front of a lorry, no matter their exact contributions, his surprise was merging with a general feeling of denial, leaving him numb and shaking.

The lorry blared its horn at him as he slid past it onto the dusty and deserted carriageway. His heart leapt in his chest but the sudden surge of adrenaline did nothing to focus him, merely set the bees filling his brain to higher levels of franticness. Mercifully, there was no-one else in this part of the city, and certainly no-one as half-drunk and emotionally incapacitated at 2 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon as he was.

_I wanted him to be more careful!_ John wailed to himself. _I wanted to give him a rude awakening before it was too late. I never thought that it_ already was _too late!_

John threw the car into park in a small car park on the edge of a field. The day was bright and clear, one of those days in early May that made one forget about all the dreary London rain and think that it was going to go on forever like this. Green rolling hills under the brilliant blue sky, only the damp grass underfoot to remind of what was.

John made it to the edge of the riverbank before falling to his knees and throwing up everything that he had had to drink at the pub and whatever was left of his meager breakfast. It was only then, trembling, covered in cold sweat and wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand, that he looked up and realized where he had driven in his blind panic. He laughed, mirthlessly, and sat back on his heels.

The little park nestled in a meander of the River Brent was nearly deserted, especially here in the woods, far away from the ramshackle assortment of animal enclosures, just as it had been on all the other days. John liked the quiet disrepair of the place, uninterrupted but for the occasional cry of a peacock.

It was not far from here, on a bridge over the Brent, that he had proposed to Veronica a few weeks after learning that he was going to be a father. Early than that, near the old stables, Freddie had told him that Killer Queen was doing well in the charts and what the frontman had always asserted with sheer bravado seemed to be coming true. Alongside those were little memories, no less pleasant; playing an impromptu football match with Robert, Roger and the still toddling Michael, Laura and Felix while Ronnie and Dominique watched and cheered them on, a picnic with Freddie and Mary where it was discovered that everyone had neglected to bring anything other than champagne and lager, and a quiet afternoon spent by himself, wondering if Brian was going to get well enough to play again and what they all would do if he didn’t.

Of course his subconscious would bring him here again, just when he was wondering the same thing once more. Except now it was Freddie and it wasn’t Brian’s arm, it was Freddie’s life. He put his head down, feeling sick once more. He looked, desolately, at the bottle of scotch in his hand and settled down into the long, soft grass, intending to blot out some memories. If only for the afternoon.

***

The telephone ringing broke through the screeching of children fighting tooth and nail the prospect of bedtime but only just. “John, get that will you?” Veronica shouted. “I can’t abandon my post.” John winced as a loud bang and some under the breath swearing reached him from the bathroom.

John released Laura, who went shrieking off into her bedroom and picked up his bedroom phone. “Yes, hello?”

“Ah, John. Roger. What the hell is happening over there, it sounds like a herd of banshees.”

“Well, you know kids.”

“Jesus Christ, don’t remind me. Number two on the way. That’ll be fair odds, but you know that Dom and I don’t team up well.” Roger was silent for a moment. “Huh, well, I just called to invite you to a bit of a shindig over at my house. Kinda a mid-touring break bananza. Dom’s getting pretty stir crazy which is driving me crazy and for the safety of my unborn progeny, we need a distraction.”

“This isn’t going to be the type of party where someone gets drunk and launches china at somebody else?”

“I won’t if you don’t.”

John thought about Freddie, the way days had stretched into weeks and there was still no sign that he had told anyone other than John and Phoebe. _He needs to work things out by talking to people. God knows nothing good can come of him stewing over it in his own head. Oh, Jesus, Deak, you can’t manage his life for him. Oh, fuck, I need a drink._ “I’ll call the nanny.”

***

The party was in full swing by the time that Brian and Freddie showed up. Dominique, enormously pregnant, was talking too loudly and shooting envious looks at passersby’s drinks. The children had coalesced into a ragtag pack that occasionally sent raiding parties into the kitchen from the outside for supplies, their various nannies sneaking a cigarette break under the eaves and looking battle weary. John had drunk his first few drinks a bit too quickly on a stomach that was a hair too empty and now he was feeling fuzzy and gregarious, half-aware of a trickle of people in and out of Roger’s back bedroom, rubbing their noses.

The crowd seemed to shudder and reform around him as Freddie walked in. He quickly established himself with a drink, a pretty brunette aspiring model and a crowd of adoring sycophants and made his way to the back bedroom. Brian hovered by the door, looking lost, and John felt a pang of sympathy for the other man.

“Hey, Brian. The kids have missed you over at the house. We’ve missed you,” John said, handing Brian a drink and pulling him into a quiet corner of the living room.

Fondness flashed in Brian’s eyes. He smiled ruefully at the glass and said, “I keep meaning to make it over, but between one thing and another…How are the kids doing?”

“Pretty good. I think we have all finally gotten into the four-kid balancing act. I am just hoping seeing Dominique doesn’t give Ronnie any ideas.”

A complicated look passed over Brian’s face as he glanced across the room at Dom. John filed that away for future dissection. “Yeah, who would have thought? Our Roger, a father of two? And with the same woman? He’s become positively domestic.”

Brian fell silent, looking out across the party with a faint frown creasing the space between his brows. John waited patiently, knowing that Brian would talk in his own time or not at all. No-one could accuse anyone in Queen of being anything less than stubborn.

The guitarist released a heaved sigh and finally met John’s eyes. “I have a question I need to ask you.”

“Of course, Brian, anything.”

“I know that it isn’t fair to ask you…you know I wouldn’t normally abuse your confidence, your friendship. But. Freddie has been acting very odd lately…I mean, a new sort of odd. He’s been moping around the house, angry or sad or…” Brian trailed off, gesturing vaguely. “But then if I confront him about it, he perks up and is overly nice and helpful. He’s been buying me lots of little presents. It’s driving me crazy. I feel like there is some sort of storm on the way, like my skin is all prickling and my bones ache.”

John winced internally. _God damn it, Fred_. So the frontman had definitely not told his lover anything yet and John really didn’t think it was fair to put the responsibility for making sure it got done on John.

“Brian…” John started slowly.

“Please,” Brian interrupted. He grabbed John’s arm with a desperation that was almost frightening and then released it just as quickly, pulling back to wrap his arms around himself. John noticed how pale and thin he had gotten since the last tour and then immediately tried to unnotice it. Brian shook his head, seemingly at himself. “No. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“I don’t really think that it is my place to, Brian. I…I wouldn’t want to misrepresent anything that Freddie…but I can try to get him to talk to you. I…” John hesitated. He thought about the bar, thought about holding the grieving and scared man as he cathartically let go of some of that pain and they reassured each other of their love. _Why the fuck wasn’t that Brian instead of me?_ Now here Brian was, looking like a kicked puppy, needing Freddie’s honesty, soaking up scraps of truth from John. And there Freddie was, trying to find unconditional grace in a room full of coked up strangers who were there for the second-hand fame and didn’t give a shit about the man farther than they could leverage his celebrity into expensive, vapid thrills. “I get the feeling that you two haven’t been talking to each other as much as you should lately.”

Brian looked embarrassed. “That’s probably my fault. Talks about that sort of thing tend to devolve into too much shouting with Freddie.” _He is as discreet about his emotions as if they were some sort of venereal disease,_ John thought and then winced at the unfortunate comparison.

“Just talk to him, Brian. He wants to hear from you as desperately as you need to hear from him.”

Brian stared out over the crowd. John got the impression of an animal that was one sudden move away from bolting back into the safety and darkness of the forest. Then he sighed and seemed to set his jaw. “Thanks, Deak. I _will_ try.” Brian smiled weakly and then turned to slip off towards the kitchen.

John watched Brian walk away into the crowd, the back of his curly head visible over the milling people. He had never thought being in a band would be like this, an infuriating maze of shifting allegiances, friendships and loyalties, never quite knowing what you owed or how to satisfy one commitment without betraying the other.

It was hard not to cede this round to Brian though. Being a little emotionally distant versus infidelity bringing home a deadly disease and avoidance and denial? It was hardly even a competition. _And here I am, coaching the losing team._

Roger reached across him and into his reverie to grab some shrimp cocktail. He had that glazed look that indicated he was just drunk enough to be motivated to speed up his drinking and John looked around for Dominique. Roger was watching Brian’s retreating figure, the solvent of alcohol stripping any veneer off of the raw longing in his eyes. _And they wonder how I can know so many things._ Roger filled up his drink, only half paying attention and sloshed some on a man wearing a too tight shirt and a mustache.

“Steady on, mate,” John said, flashing the stranger an apologetic eye roll. “Don’t you think you should be slowing down a bit?”

Roger snorted. “I am drinking for two now, I’ll have you know. And besides, didn’t I lure you here with promises of drunken debauchery and soused fighting?”

It was John’s turn to snort. “I suppose you did that. At least you aren’t parked in the cocaine room.”

“There’s a cocaine room?” Roger looked at him, all wide-eyed innocence that wouldn’t convince anyone.

“Huh, sure. Here, top me off.”

Roger complied good-naturedly, filling John’s glass a bit more successfully. Then, with carefully studied casualness, he asked, “What were you talking to Brian about?”

John sighed, “Freddie.”

“Oh,” Roger blinked. “Oh. No, you know what? I don’t think I am even going to get involved.”

“Yeah, I should have followed that advice,” John said, darkly. Roger cocked an eyebrow and John shook his head. “How are you, Roger?”

“Oh, me? I’m grand. Trying to convince Dom that her due date being the day before the tour starts is _good_ timing, but other than that, couldn’t be better.” There was a studied determination in Roger’s voice that was quite unlike him and John started to think, for the first time, that this baby might be a good thing for the other man.

“Felix was early, wasn’t he?”

“Late,” Roger said grimly. “You think she would appreciate that going on tour is how I fund the grub’s lifestyle, but nooo.”

“Women,” John said, sardonically.

“Yeah. So I’m hopeful, you know? It’s been a shit couple of years, but I think it’s going to all pull back together.”

John looked at the cautious optimism in Roger’s face and couldn’t find it within himself to do anything to disabuse the drummer of that notion. He half-grinned at the man and swigged down the last of his drink before fortifying himself with another. “Well, thank you for that, Roger. I think you’ve given me the strength to go do something I really don’t want to do.”

Roger looked a bit confused but raised his glass to John anyway. “Well, cheers then.”

“Yeah, cheers.”

Freddie had drifted with the flow of the party and was talking in the hall behind the kitchen with two blonde women that John vaguely remembered as either being Roger’s cousins or extras from their last music video shoot. John stalked up to the trio and grabbed Freddie’s arm.

“I need to talk to you,” he said gruffly.

“Ah, John, Carrie was just telling me that…”

“Now, Freddie.” John pitched his voice low. The shorter blonde raised an eyebrow, looking put out. “Alone.”

He physically dragged the frontman to the small powder room down the hall. Pushing Freddie inside, he pulled the door closed and blocked it with his body. “Why haven’t you told Brian?”

Freddie looked shocked. He also looked pale and a bit thinner around his jaw and cheekbones, but that was probably John’s fatalistic imagination acting up. “Jesus, John. Do we have to do this here?”

“Yes. Yes, we do. Because you have been avoiding me.”

“I was trying to avoid a lecture and it seems like that was a valid concern, now isn’t it, Deak?”

“A lecture? I have been worried sick about my _friend_ and his lover who also happens to be my _bandmate_ and you are afraid of getting a _stern talking to_?”

“To be fair, darling, you’ve never been on the receiving end of one of these…”

John’s eyebrows were threatening to crawl up into his hairline. “Just what were you planning?” he hissed. “To switch to faithful condom use and just hope that Brian doesn’t ask any uncomfortable questions?”

“No!” Freddie snapped and then paused and thought. “Do you think that would work?” The expression on John’s face made him back up a little in the tiny loo. “No, of course not. The truth is Brian and I haven’t slept together for quite a while now. I didn’t think…well, I thought I had time. To think of the right words.”

“Freddie,” John said seriously. “And, by God, I hope you know how much I resent you for making me have to think about the timing of your and Brian’s sex acts, do you remember what I was telling you about dormancy periods?”

“What?”

“Jesus, Fred,” John’s eye twitched the same way it did every time Freddie asked him some question about electronics. “Dormancy. You could have had this for years! You mean to tell me you haven’t slept with our bandmate for _years_?”

Freddie perched on the edge of the vanity, a strange faraway look on his face. John could begin to guess at what was going through his head and he didn’t like it. Sometimes times he just couldn’t understand the other man at all. _You had it all. And you threw it away for what?_ It wasn’t something John, pictures of his first true love smiling at him over the tops of his children’s heads in his mind, could comprehend.

Freddie’s mouth twisted and he looked up at the ceiling, “No, not years.”

John tried to push back a wave of frustration. “You have to tell him or I will. And think what he will feel that on top of everything else, you were hiding this from him and he was the last to know.”

Freddie went white. “You wouldn’t, you bastard,” he said in a hushed voice.

John clenched his jaw. “You know this has to be done. And it has to be done _now_ because it might already be too late.” John thought about Brian, who had no idea what kind of monster was determinedly stalking him and then about the other men who just might. “And, you know, Fred, you should really notify your other sexual partners.”

Freddie snorted, “Like I remember…know their names.”

_Rush. Rush would have been wonderful. All I ever would have worried about is playing the bass while doing three keyboards with my teeth. It would have been glorious._

“How many, Fred?” John’s teeth were starting to ache.

“I don’t know. A hundred? Two hundred?”

“Jesus Christ,” John swore, the numbers and the logistics making his eyes water. “I had no idea…”

Freddie arched an eyebrow and eyed him sideways. “The way you tend to end your nights leaves you pretty incapable of monitoring how I end mine.”

“I…” John ceded the point to Freddie. _I have been selfish. It was never my business at all, but I knew what was happening and I could have at least tried to stop it._ But in the end, John had valued those crazy nights away from the kids more than he had Freddie and Brian’s life and he didn’t think his conscience was going to let him get away with pleading ignorance.

“This is going to wreck him,” Freddie said quietly into the stillness of the little bathroom, uncharacteristically contemplative. The din of the party was a muted throb pressing against the door and John saw one of those rare flashes of whatever it was that Freddie and Brian shared. It was enough in these moments for him to think that maybe everything they put each other through was worth it, if it was all because a love like this. Not a gentle love or a nurturing one, but a compulsion that burned as pure and perilous as the refiner’s fire. “He won’t be able to forgive me. Oh, he’ll pretend to, but it isn’t something he can understand and so he can’t absolve me off it.”

“Can you forgive yourself? If it goes on like this?”

“I never meant for it to get so complicated.”

“No,” John said, hitching himself up onto the counter next to him friend. They sat in silence that way for a while, Freddie smoking a cigarette and John getting dizzy off the secondhand smoke and the weight of the future pressing down on him.

***

John was right. John was always fucking right, Freddie should be use to that by now, but in this _particular_ case, Deaky was _particularly_ right. Of course Brian had to be told. There was absolutely no way that Freddie could get out of that one. No way that he could just go about the rest of his life, slowly wasting away and depend on the very English reluctance for uncomfortable confrontation of his band in general and Brian individually to never have to talk about it.

That’s what he wanted, though. He couldn’t stand the thought of people fussing over him, not for a sickness, a weakness. The whispering behind his back. Oh, God, of course it was just his luck that a time of greater sexual freedom than ever for queer men, a new sexually transmitted disease and a man he never wanted to let go of would perfectly coincide. He paced the halls of the estate, wishing he was back in the closer comfort of Garden Lodge, and failing that, wishing that the big house didn’t echo so emptily and wishing that Brian would never come home. He knew that he couldn’t have both.

Freddie swore under his breath and stalked outside to the garden. Maybe there he could clear his head. Spring was giving way to the full, lush bloom of summer, just as it seemed that it might hold out forever, surrendering to the new season in a wanton rush. The rose buds were plump in anticipation of their June glory and the leaves on the trees still electric green and crepe paper plush. Freddie walked slowly down the crushed gravel path to a small stone bench and sank down onto it. Delilah had trailed him outside and now leapt onto the bench next to him with a lightness he wished that he could feel. He let her scratch the sides off her face on his outstretched fingertips, thinking, not for the first time, of the pleasures of a life as simple as a cat’s.

The breeze stirred Freddie’s hair and a solitary leaf from the Japanese maple next to the bench drifted down to land in between his feet. Delilah jumped down to solemnly inspect it and suddenly Freddie remembered another early summer day.

_Brian is too long for the little bench but he doesn’t seem concerned, his head in Freddie’s lap and one lanky leg dangling over the end. The other leg is drawn up, knee in the air and toes curled around the carved rope edge of the stone. Freddie is plaiting tiny braids into his dense hair while Brian tells him silly little stories of the cats’ activities. He feels too happy to breath and can’t trust himself to speak, so he smiles and laughs where appropriate._

_Brian falls silent and then smiles, bright and open. “You know how much I love you, right?”_

_Freddie laughs, taking something for granted that he wouldn’t grasp until it was gone. “Of course.”_

_“Never leave.” The emotion in Brian’s voice shakes Freddie and for once it is he who pushes back against it, needing in some way to deny the power and size of that great thing he sometimes glimpses in the depths of the other man._

_“I won’t if you don’t,” Freddie lightly pushes Brian’s shoulder, the other man sways on the edge of balance and reflexively grabs for Freddie’s arm. They tumble off the bench together in a heap of arms and legs and too much hair, laughing breathlessly._

_The fall turns to mock wrestling which cascades into gasping kisses and Freddie hopes that Phoebe quite forgets to come call them for dinner._

There was the distant sound of the back door opening and closing and it jarred Freddie out of his reverie. He took a deep breath as Brian rounded the bend in the path, shaken as always these days when he saw his lover. Brian was too thin, too pale, looking like when he was sick with hepatitis, looking as if he was sick with…Freddie gulped, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat.

Brian wrapped his arms around himself awkwardly. “Phoebe said you wanted to talk to me. At the party, John said…” Brian trailed off, looking lost.

Freddie cleared his throat, trying to convince himself that doing this with no preparation had been a good idea. “Brian…I have been trying to come up with a way to make this better than it is, t—to soften it somehow. But I don’t think I can.”

Brian had recoiled a little bit, a look on his face as though he was trying to figure out what kind of disaster was coming. Freddie soldiered on. “I’ve betrayed you. I’ve fucked around and now I have it. I’ve been tested. AIDS, HIV positive, whatever they call it, I have it,” Freddie was aware that he was rambling but he couldn’t seem to stop, couldn’t seem to pull his eyes around to meet Brian’s. “And I know that you have every right to be mad or t—to, or to… well. It’s just that you should know that it won’t change the facts or that we will have to deal with them and I am sorry. I am sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

Freddie lifted his head and looked Brian full in the face, bravado falling apart in seconds.

Freddie remembered the words on the paper he had gotten in the mail. He thought about how stark they had been, angular black on crisp white paper. He had thought that they had been the hardest thing he would ever have to read—because they were unequivocal, impossible to force a second meaning into. But now, glancing at Brian’s face, gone completely blank, he found it unbearable to raise his eyes to the familiar visage a second time. Because this was the person that he thought he knew better than anyone, better than himself in some ways. But now, when it mattered the most, he had no idea what to read in that expression. Not a single, fucking clue. He longed for the certainty of negative…or even positive…because then he would have some idea of what to do.

Brian blinked and his lips parted slightly. Freddie held his breath, trying to prepare himself for a tirade or even those most dreaded three little words. _I’m leaving you_. Anything but that, _dear God_ , but he could do his best not to make a fool of himself when he heard them.

“I…” Brian’s eye’s darted from side to side, the way that they did when he was trying to work out some complex math equation in his head. Time slowed down for Freddie, just like on the cusp of an unavoidable accident and, just like in an accident, car careening towards the ditch, Freddie saw the tools to avoid it laid out in front of him. Brian was coming to conclusions of his own, following the twisting dark paths of his mind when he should be talking, should be working it out with Freddie. Freddie tried to open his mouth, tried to intercept the conclusion that wasn’t inevitable, tried to yank the steering wheel back to the road, but just like in that car crash, he sat, time stretched out to the snapping point, paralyzed with fear.

“…I’ve got to go.”

Brian stood up, his eyes sliding from Freddie’s desperate stare like the wrong ends of magnets pushed together. He shoved a hand into the hair at the nape of his neck, opened his mouth as though he was going to say something more and then closed it with a snap. He spun on his heel and strode out of the garden with grim finality.

Freddie stood up and stared at the back of the slamming garden gate. He felt the echoes of that crash reverberating in the pound of his heartbeat which was strange because he was as faint and numb as if all the blood had been poured from his body. There was a moment of stillness and then it all came crashing back, the blood, the repercussions, Brian’s fleeing back and with it, anger. Freddie grabbed a small potted plant and hurled it against the wall.

“God fucking damn it all to hell!”


	4. Chapter 4

_When I'm gone no need to wonder_

_If I ever think of you_

_The same moon shines_

_The same wind blows for both of us_

_And time is but a paper moon_

_Be not gone_

**DAY ONE**

Brian drove.

The car seemed eager under his hands and feet, responding with the quiet, powerful self-assurance that only a Bentley seemed to possess. He didn’t have any destination or direction in mind other than _away_. He was aware he was clutching the steering wheel too tightly, but he couldn’t seem to get any commands through to his extremities. He couldn’t quite catch his breath, an all-consuming tightness strangling him. The only possible solution seemed to be to drive.

And so he drove, and as he did so he kept seeing the look on Freddie face in the silence after his news before Brian had turned to flee. He kept hearing a voice in his head whispering, _coward_ , _coward, coward._ He nearly relished the voice though, because he suspected it was drowning out other words, words that weren’t _self_ -accusatory, words that he wasn’t ready to hear. He tried to grasp onto the egocentric disgust, a shadowy hate stalking around the dusty corners of his mind. He trembled, his hands on the wheel white. _Coward, coward, coward_. But as he slowly piled up the miles between him and his home, however, that voice, that image and even that terrible shame started to fade.

He was left with a buzzing sort of numbness. It filled him with relief, taking the place of the jostling emotions and allowing him to concentrate on the mad lorry drivers and the holiday makers who seemed to think that 60mph and the right lane were the perfect situation for their caravan to be in. He passed them all eventually, watching half-heartedly for the police, thinking he might welcome the distraction of being pulled over but afraid that some of the numbness would show on his face. Would make him not fit for normal human interaction, let aside interacting with coppers.

As he left the congestion of London behind, the overcast started to lose its stranglehold on the sky and a weak and anemic sun shone through. It was easy to imagine that the sky and the grey road had blended into one undefined space and he was floating, guiding the car somewhere without people, without their disappointed eyes and without ties. Brian closed his eyes for a fraction longer than he otherwise would dare, the dashed white lines painted on the insides of his eyelids.

Brian drove until he ran out of road into the sea, the asphalt petering out into rocky cliffs, crumbling into the foaming waves and then there was nowhere else to drive.

He left the car haphazardly parked in the small carpark at the end of the road and scrambled down the steep steps cut into purple sandstone to the beach. He walked, half-staggering, feeling weak and shaky in the knees, across the sand of the little bay until the water lapped at his shoes. Then he stopped, finally, although he felt twitchy and nervous, as though he had not put nearly enough miles between himself and his problems.

Brian sat down with a thud on the beach, unmindful of the sand and the odd wave that sloshed over his lap. The day was unfairly beautiful, clear and bright. The sky was a rare brilliant turquoise that merged with the deeper teal of the sea seamlessly. A soft breeze rustled through the wildflowers on the clifftops and ruffled Brian’s hair. The gentle sunshine warmed his skin. He shivered and pulled his arms tighter around himself, no matter how pleasant the sun, it didn’t seem to penetrate, couldn’t seem to warm some icy core in the middle of his chest.

Finally, he relented the slightest amount and allowed the thoughts to come creeping back into his conscience, carefully cracking the door of his mind in case it was too much to handle. The past seemed to stretch out in front of his mind’s eye just like the ocean stretched out from his lap, the event of the past day as crashing and spectacular as the waves in the forefront.

_God, what I wreck I’ve made of my life_. He thought of what his father would say. _I guess you were right all along. Although it wasn’t my job that would leave me destitute and busking on the street corner…it would be my relationship that ended in abject failure._

His relationship. It made him unaccountably angry that he couldn’t even say that his marriage was falling apart, couldn’t even claim that glimmer of gravitas. _If this all comes apart, what then? Some bloke I couldn’t even say publicly lived with me no longer lives with me?_ It seemed like such a small change to have blown a hole through his insides and left him hollow and bereft.

He was thirty-eight years old and had only ever been with one man. He had never been anywhere in particular with a woman. Most of his friends were Freddie’s first and nearly all of the rest would be picking sides if they heard news of a split. They had no children to fight over. His father was dying.

_Millions of people know my name and so what?_ he wanted to shout at the ocean. _If I walk away from Freddie, there will be no-one left._ And the worst part was that he knew he had made it that way.

A wave of self-loathing swept over him just like the waves of cold salt water that left his clothes soaked and clinging to his skin with a clammy weight. _Oh, woe is you, Brian…but what about Freddie? He might di—no._ His thoughts evaporated in panic. He couldn’t let himself complete that thought. Not yet.

He lowered himself down onto his back and stared up at the blinding blue of the sky. He tried to imagine his life without Freddie and came up blank. He instead thought of what it had been before the singer had shown him so much in the garden behind that label exec’s house. He supposed he had been happy, in a way. He had certainly been less miserable, the highs and lows of a life richly lived leveled out like the mountains being made way for the train.

Brian lay in the shallow sea until the sunset first splashed and then drained the sky of a host of vibrant colors. He lay in the salt water, the occasional stray wave washing across his face until the shivering turned from psychological into physiological and he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers or toes. He closed his eyes and wondered what it would take to just never get up again. To slowly grow colder and colder until the tide came in and silenced his ragged mind for good this time.

But then he thought of Felix, he thought of Laura and Robert and Michael and Joshua, he thought of the unborn child growing ripe and hale in Dominique’s belly. He thought of his mother and father and the siblings he had never had but had always imagined. His mind dwelt lovingly over what their lives were and all that they were on the cusp of becoming. And lastly, as it seemed that the sand was going to wash over him, wave by wave burying him in his shallow grave, he thought of Freddie. Freddie, bright and capricious, loving and vindictive, remembering all the cats’ birthdays and forgetting to call. Freddie Mercury, no better name than the one that he had chosen for himself. Brian thought of the mercurial man and it made him angry and it made him hurt and for just one small moment, the thought drove the numbness from his limbs and drove him from the sea. It lasted just long enough to carry him back up to his car where he collapsed in the back seat and cried himself to sleep, salt dry and crusted on his skin.

_...that same day..._

The first night after Brian left, Freddie spent the hours nervously sitting on the sofa in front of a huge bouquet he had ordered in a rush, expecting him home at any minute. If he was honest with himself, he would admit that he had built up all these expectations of how the news was going to go over. He had wanted to have a proper row about it, he had never dreamed that Brian would just leave without a word. His refusal to follow Freddie’s subconscious script had knocked the singer askew, casting him into a terrible sort of limbo. Every sound that echoed through the big, empty house made his heart leap into his throat, certain it was Brian’s footsteps in the hall, come back to tell him that he hated Freddie, that he was leaving him, that he forgave him, that he would stay if Freddie swore to never again leave his side and brought him French pastries and exotic liqueurs on the hour. Any word at all that Freddie could cling to rather than the image of the blank look on Brian’s face and the sight of his back walking away without the slightest clue as to what he was thinking.

As the darkness crept into the house, Freddie made no move to turn on the lights. Hours past and he stared at the flowers, realizing that, of course, they were nothing that Brian would have wanted had he come back, Freddie had projected himself onto his lover again. _Do I even really know him at all,_ he thought desolately. Every sound made his hopes rise less and less until he barely even noticed when Phoebe came in, took off his shoes and covered him with a throw blanket.

**DAY TWO**

The second night was fast approaching when Freddie decided that he couldn’t take the sight of the house growing darker and darker, emptier and emptier. He made a few phone calls to a select group of friends who even if they couldn’t be counted on for much, could be counted on to be up for a night out. Then he called for the car. He intended to get roaring drunk and maybe even more than a little high and forget all about magazine articles and doctors and curly haired guitarists with bottomless hazel eyes.

The club was trapped in its endless loop of déjà vu. The same glassy eyed men making the same lame passes, knowing the intention was all that would be heard over the music. The same multicolored drinks spilled into glasses, into gullets, into bathroom stalls. The same music, amplified into just rhythm and thrust.

“What!?” Freddie yelled over the incessant pound of bass that seemed to be shaking his brain loose from its moorings inside his head.

“I said, are you alright? You don’t look so good.”

George was a good friend in the sense that he was good for a narrow set of things. Back alley blow jobs, drugs that were nominally what he said they were and being alarmingly more perceptive than a drugs and blow jobs friend really had any right to be. Freddie shook his head and tried to look perkier. “Yeah, it’s just...trouble at home, yeah? I think that I just need to get out of my head a bit.”

George smiled a wicked smile that might have been the one that cemented their friendship in the first place and raised an eyebrow. “Well, I can definitely help with that.”

The music was dampened somewhat in the bathroom, and in the relative quiet, Freddie heard the roaring in his ears that reminded him of coming off stage, sweating and high, when Brian would hand off the Red Special to a roadie, turn to him and smile, sweet and slo— _no, no, no!_ Freddie shook his head and downed the handful of pills that someone had handed him. He hoped it had been George, but the alcohol in his system was starting to build to the point where little snatches of time were starting to go missing, like a skipping record.

His stomach rebelled finally after an unfortunate shot of whiskey and he bolted for an abandoned stall. He emptied the misdeeds of his night into the dirty loo to the sounds of somebody having sex in the stall next to him. He moaned and curled up on the floor.

He was hazily aware of some sort of commotion outside in the hall and then Phoebe and Terry were swinging open the door he had neglected to lock and looming over him.

“Come on, Fred. We are going. Now.” Phoebe didn’t use that tone of voice often, but we he did, Freddie knew better to argue. He heaved himself up from the sticky floor and shrugged of a few half-hearted protests about his departure. Phoebe practically pulled him to the door and out onto the curb where they were greeted by a sea of flash bulbs and rowdy paparazzi.

Freddie stumbled to a halt, stunned and suddenly aware of the cause of Pheobe’s particularly bad mood. And then the scene spun and his stomach lurched with it and Freddie was sick all over the most aggressive paparazzo’s shoes. As the world went hazy and Terry shoved him into the car, Freddie spared a moment’s thought to muse what a shame that was because they had been particularly exquisite suede Fendi loafers.

Some indeterminate time and several muffled curses from Pheobe later, Freddie lay in his big empty bed, one foot on the floor. The shadowed ceiling whirled and tilted in his vision and he thought about being sick again. To tell the truth, he didn’t think that any of it had helped at all, through the haze of alcohol, his memory was fuzzy but not dimmed one wit. Now he just felt layers of badness piled up and suffocating him and like something of a fuckup on top of it all.

_I_ am _a fuckup. The world’s biggest, most like._

Terry and Phoebe had not been pleased when they had finally been able to wrangle him into the car and back home, but they weren’t half as upset as Freddie was when Phoebe told him there were no messages.

**DAY THREE**

The third night he hadn’t been able to take it anymore and had decided to try just ignoring the whole mess. He had spent the entire day as edgy as the cats during a thunderstorm, waiting for something, anything to happen to distract him. He had tried to go about the day as normally as possible once his hangover had worn off with the help of liberal amounts of hair of the dog. He played the piano desultory, pretending to write but mostly playing little snippets of melody that morphed into old Queen songs, songs that started off as his and all turned into Brian’s somewhere during the bridge. He stopped playing often, convincing himself that the hangover was making him tired, not ready to admit that he was listening for the sound of the door or the phone, anything at all. Finally, he stood up abruptly, knocking the piano bench over with a crash, and stalked out to the garden where he couldn’t hear any of the phantom noises in his head.

Brian was everywhere in the garden. He was in the memories that came crowding in around every turn. He was in the rose bushes he had chosen, reluctantly, when Freddie had thrown the catalogue in his face and said, pick your favorite, pick your least favorite, I am leaving you for a florist if you can’t manage an opinion. Freddie lay on his back in the grass, staring up at the sky, definitely not remembering how Brian had slammed the catalogue open on the coffee table, put his finger down emphatically on ‘Lady of Shallot’ and climbed over the catalogue and the table to wrestle Freddie of the sofa and down to the floor. Freddie waited until the big golden sun had slipped below the horizon, holding himself perfectly still as though movement would scare up the images in his head. Then he slunk back inside the house, giving up on insulating himself anymore. As soon as he did, the guilt and recrimination came flooding back.

He ripped all the blankets off of the bed in the little guest room at the end of the hall with the bad view and curled up in a ball of the floor. He spent the night sobbing and making desperate ultimatums with God. _If you bring him back, I will never leave this house again, I’ll give Brian all the love and adoration he deserves, I’ll never act like the stuck-up, bitchy primadonna I am._

The carpet beneath his cheek was thick with cat hair. He stared at it and wondered why he couldn’t seem to breathe.

_I wanted to be punished for my sins, but it’s been three days he’s been gone and I never thought it would hurt_ this bad _._

**DAY FOUR**

“Get off the floor, Fred.”

Freddie normally welcomed the sound of his assistant’s voice. Granted, Phoebe was usually telling him that dinner was ready or the final details of some party the two had spent hours huddled together planning until Brian was liable to shout from the music room about finances and wastes of time. Phoebe was apt to then go and smooth things over with Brian…shit, _Brian_.

The reason that Phoebe’s usually pleasant and happily received voice was currently boring into Freddie’s skull like a battalion of abusive drill sergeants crowded back into the forefront of Freddie’s admittedly shaky conscience. “ _Fuck_ ,” he groaned and rolled over from his side onto his back. Several things made themselves apparent at once. One, he had fallen asleep on the floor of the spare bedroom sometime in the early morning hours and, as he shook his waking fog, all the accompanying reasons for that fit of self-indulgent misery. Two, he was growing too old for this sort of behavior and between the crick in his neck and the ache of his back, he wasn’t sure he could obey his assistant’s commands anyway.

“Come on, you’ve had your little sulk. You can’t pine away forever.”

“ _Little sulk_?!” he said indignantly through the pounding in his head, eyes screwed tightly shut. “The love of my goddamn life has just walked out on me, my life is falling to pieces…quite literally, if I must remind you of all people…”

“Yes, and what part of that is helped by you curling up on this floor and feeling sorry for yourself?”

“Jesus. All of it. None of it.”

“Come on, we are going shopping, it’ll make you feel better.”

Freddie didn’t bother to argue. He felt certain that it couldn’t make him feel any worse, so there didn’t seem to be much harm in it.

They wound up at a little flea market south of the city. The day was as clear and bright and lovely as it unfairly had been since Brian had left. Freddie tried to stay miserable, but the sunshine was able to lift his spirits as much as anything else he had tried.

He found a little booth selling old postcards and he thumbed through them, smiling a bit as he found ones from places he too had sent postcards from. He thumbed past serious tourists posing on the Wall of China, camels with ornate saddles in front of the pyramids and then he flipped over the card to find a lovely watercolor of a Japanese garden, a graceful cherry tree trailing blossoms over the reflective clear blue of a koi pond.

_Brian was beautiful in Japan, in a way Freddie didn’t think he had ever caught a glimmer of a clue of back in boring old England. The fog muted greens of the gardens suited his pale skin and wrapped in a kimono, his thinness was exotic and striking. Freddie loved to watch him on the crowded streets, Roger, a splash of blond at his side, parting the sea of dark, straight haired strangers a full head above them._

_He had been fighting the feeling that had made itself rudely apparent at Brian’s sickbed the whole trip, with very little success at all. The feeling that there was a question he needed to ask Brian._

_The little moments were quickly piling up, moments that had nearly, but not quite, introduced the topic for him. Brian joking about how romantic it all was. The cheesy, clearly catering to tourists, fortune teller who told them in all seriousness that three of the four would find love in Japan and the long quiet wait backstage before one of the shows during which Freddie had worried a sore in the inside of his cheek from chewing on it._

_And here they were, on the plane ride home and still Freddie had not asked. He felt like he had to know, even if the answer was no, even if it was maybe for a few brilliant moments that fizzled out and left them both heartsick and tense for every moment of the rest of their lives. Freddie had to ask that question, because the answer might, just might, be yes._

“Fred, what are you doing?”

Freddie came back to himself with a start, realizing that he had been staring off into the distance for a good while. He glanced down at his hands and saw that in his reverie he had torn the little postcard to bits. Pieces of pink and white blossoms scattered across the table, making patterns that he could almost find messages, omens, in. He didn’t think that they were good.

“I...I was just thinking...”

“That’s it, I give up. Brian might come back. He might never come back. If you want to spend the time while you are waiting to know which wasting away, it is obvious no-one is going to be able to stop you. I just hope you remember that you have people in your life who want to help you, even if you don’t want to help yourself, God knows why.”

“I can’t stop thinking about him.”

Phoebe looked cross and worried all at once. He paid the postcard man and lead Freddie to the car. “I know it doesn’t help, but time will help you with that.”

They drove home in silence. Freddie stared out the window and wondered just what he was going to do.


	5. Chapter 5

 

_Save me, save me, save me_

 

**DAY SIX**

A storm blew up off the eastern coast of Scotland in the early afternoon. Brian had been sitting on a pile of tumbled down stone blocks, enjoying the brainless activity of breathing the salt air and enjoying the feel of sun on his face. He watched as the humidity in the air grew oppressive and the clouds pile up into soaring white turrets. It felt as though all of nature was holding its breath, waiting for something to break loose into noisy catharsis. When it seemed that the clouds could grow no higher, that the blindingly blue sky simply couldn’t contain that much _up_ in them, then they slowly darkened into cinder grey. Then, suddenly, the wind shifted and took the bright sunlight with it. The wind whipped the waves into a frenzy of crashing spray against the base of the cliffs far below Brian and plastered his hair down against his scalp.

The last of the tourists he had climbed to the castle with scrambled for shelter amid the ruins, but Brian hadn’t noticed them then and he didn’t spare them a thought now except for a passing gratefulness for the solitude. He imagined that he felt the ocean spray on his face and then the imagined moisture became all too real as the skies split open and poured their contents down on the land and the sea. Brian made no move to seek respite from the rain himself, turning his face up to the sky as bands of heavier rain swept in monumental majesty parallel to the dramatic coast. A rumble of far off thunder seemed to shake the ancient ground under his perch and he imagined it all coming loose and sliding into the depths with a huge crash and fountain of water.

Brian wasn’t entirely sure how the last five days had been spent or, to be completely honest, if there had indeed been five of them. He felt less hungry than he should have if he had gone five days without eating, but his back ached as if several weeks had gone by curled up sleeping in the back of the Bentley.

The storm passed as quickly as it had come but fading with a gentle tapering of rain and wind. The clouds thinned and then parted, song thrushes peeking out of the bushes to greet the returning sun. A particularly brave bird darted out, pecked and tugged at his shoelace, as if hopeful for a worm. Brian surprised both himself and the bird by laughing out loud, his voice harsh and strange sounding to his own ears.

“I need to go get something to eat,” he informed the little bird and heaved himself to his feet. He looked down at his sodden clothes with surprise and dismay and then shook himself and started the hike back to town.

There was a lonely petrol station on the outskirts of town. Brian bought a premade cheese sandwich, a ginger ale and a change of pants. He washed his face and changed in the loo. Staring up at his reflection in the dirty and scratched mirror hanging over the sink with a broken hot water tap, he nearly laughed but choked back a sob instead. Here he was, washing up like a hobo, when a pile of cash sat in his bank account that could buy this ramshackle place several times over. And the worst part was that he would trade it all for the opportunity to go back a year and have things turn out differently.

Brian pressed his hand against the mirror, blotting out his image. Then he sighed, turned and headed out into the sunshine, bright and making the wet asphalt steam.

**DAY SEVEN (ONE WEEK)**

By the time a week had past, Freddie felt the ache of his despair distantly through a fog, the way a headache felt with a hangover. Like having a hangover, he found it difficult to leave the sofa. He had spent most days listlessly flipping through the channels of daytime television, ignoring the cats asking for attention and Phoebe’s badgering to get up and take a shower. He finally told the assistant to take a vacation for a week or so. The hurt and worry in Phoebe’s eyes nearly penetrated through Freddie’s fog, but then he was gone and Freddie was truly alone.

He’d fed the cats when he had to and fed himself when the pains in his stomach had broken through the dull and all-consuming ache coming from somewhere deep and a bit north of his guts. Is this why they call it a broken heart, he thought and then chided himself for being maudlin.

When the day had dawned bright and clear on the seventh day and he was just about to curse the birds outside the window for their apparent unbridled happiness, it occurred to him that whatever he thought he was doing, it didn’t seem to be doing any good.

 _Goddamn him to hell_ , he thought viciously. Perhaps it was unfair to blame Brian for his power over Freddie, but Freddie would do it anyway. _I can show him, he can only do this to me if I let him._

He dragged himself to the shower, reconsidered and drew up a big bath with all the froufrou tonics, soaps and toilet waters he could find. He let himself slip under the water, unmindful of the wave that sloshed over the edge and let his breath go in an explosive stream of bubbles. Freddie tried to let all the tension in his body go along with the breath. When his lungs ached with the need for air, he resurfaced, slicking the water from his face and hair with his hands.

It felt good. The water felt clean as though he was rinsing himself pure again from all the despair and disease. He thought that if he repeated those words to himself enough times he might even believe it.

He stayed in the water until his fingers started to wrinkle and then he took a coarse sponge and scrubbed his entire body, even behind his ears and between his toes. Then he got out and toweled himself dry. He ransacked the bathroom cabinets for every expensive lotion, balm and cologne he could find and slathered himself with them. Brian had used to tease him about his toiletries as the man could seemingly maintain himself with a half-used tube of bargain brand toothpaste and stolen hotel shampoo, even with that ridiculous hair, and Freddie would tease right back that he couldn’t believe he was sharing beautifully coiffed body with a Philistine. Later, the teasing lost its veneer of laughter and became critical and impatient. After one silent, interminable drive an hour late to one of Brian’s space events, Freddie had moved his stuff to the bathroom down the hall.

There had been a list of those sort of little annoyances, things that he could now do without compromise, restaurants that he could go to without checking the vegetarian menu, friends he could invite over whenever he felt like, activities he could pursue. He was free to do whatever he liked, he could invite 100 strangers in off the street and stay up until dawn, drinking champagne and doing endless lines of blow. He had been focused on the negatives of Brian leaving, he had to also consider the positives. They might even outweigh all the shit. By a lot.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror, standing there stinking of clashing colognes and feeling foolish. If he was honest, it hadn’t helped that much. What was the fun of staying in bed until teatime draped in French silk if Brian wasn’t going to come in, wearing a t-shirt and pants that must have been family heirlooms from how thin the fabric was worn and raise his eyebrow in disapproval just the barest fraction. What good was trying on a new outfit if Brian wasn’t going to come over and remove it piece by piece, saying, I love you without this hat, I love you without this pocket handkerchief, I love you without these trousers, I definitely love you without these pants...

Freddie shuddered and turned away from the mirror. He had one last trick left in his back pocket. A life fixer that he supposed he relied on too often. He sighed. Nothing else was working.

“I need to go talk with John,” he informed the tangle of cats on the pile of laundry he had let build up in the corner of the bathroom. The cats seem rather unimpressed. Freddie empathized.

A phone call was made. There was a long silence after he had asked haltingly if he could come over for dinner. “I just need to get out of the house, John, I’m going crazy in here.”

Finally, just as he began to wonder if the last month had done it to push his long-suffering friend over the edge, John let out a big sigh. “Sure, Fred, of course. Umm, Ronnie’s making lasagna.”

John’s house was refreshingly normal. The kids were involved in making forts of the living room furniture, engaged in the task with the quiet, focused intensity that only Deacon children seemed to possess. Freddie was certain they were all going to be serious engineers that would always keep their heads in an emergency and never be without a pen on hand. Veronica was in the kitchen with the nanny and accepted his bottle of wine and florid apologies with a laugh and a shove to his shoulder.

John was in his office, fussing with a tangle of wires and cables that Freddie supposed might be a guitar pedal. Or it could be a time machine, for all he knew. John took one look at the singer and got out a couple of glasses and poured them both some scotch.

“Out with it.”

“Brian’s fucked off,” Freddie explained, wincing at how his voice broke on the words.

“What?”

“I told him, told him I was...positive...a week ago. He didn’t say a word, just walked out the door, took the Bentley and went God knows where.” Freddie was horrified to find himself starting to cry, silent tears that streamed down his face. He thought he had gotten every last tear out during that night on the floor. Maybe it was the look of pity that John was sending him. “I haven’t heard from his since,” he said helplessly.

John was frowning, pushing a hand into his hair. “Jesus, Fred...what abou—,”

Freddie sat up straighter. “If you about to say something about the fucking _business side_ of this fucking band, you can shove it.”

John frowned deeper, but kept his mouth closed. Freddie’s anger hadn’t run its course, though, and certain past conversations were still on his mind. “And if you say you told me so...that you always warned me we would end up doing this to the band...”

“Fred,” John interrupted and now he looked angry too. “How have you spent the last week?”

“Umm,” Freddie gulped, feeling derailed.

“Believe it or not, Freddie, I do want us _all_ to be happy and successful and content. I don’t _want_ to nag you. I don’t even have all the answers.” John paused and poured himself some more scotch. He looked up at Freddie and the anger drained from his face, to be replaced by a deep weariness. “Maybe we all have been spending too much time blaming each other instead of taking ownership of our own actions...or inactions.”

“I’m sorry, Deak...I didn’t...” Freddie felt miserable and small. “It’s no excuse, but it’s been a shit week.”

“What happens now, Fred?” John asked softly. Freddie was struck by the question. That was the question whose answer he had been groping towards the whole week. At first, he had been waiting for Brian to give him the answer by speaking, by coming back, anything. Then he had been waiting for it to come to him out of the blue. If nothing else was clear to him now, it was this: if he wanted to know what to do, he was going to have to figure it out for himself.

“I won’t let him do this to me, John,” he hoped he could convince both of them. “I can’t let him leave me wallowing in self-pity waiting for him to come back. I need to admit that this was my fault, I broke it and there isn’t anyone who can build my life back up for me.”

“You know you won’t be alone while you do it.”

“Thanks, Deak,” he looked down at his hands, feeling embarrassed. “You know I mean that, right? For everything.”

John huffed a laugh through his nose. “Oh, well, you usually make it worth being your friend in your own special way.” John pushed a pen around his desk and then looked up. “Are you going to tell Roger?”

Confusion passed briefly through the frontman. Maybe John was giving him a pass for once. “Yeah, soon...once I work up the courage.”

There was a faint rustle at the door. Veronica stood there, oven mitts clasped in one hand. John smiled up at his wife, without pretense, and Freddie felt a pang of jealousy. _Although it’s probably for the best that the deities that be never deigned to entrust me with such exquisite normality. I’ve fucked up fucked up, what would I have done with this?_

“Dinner’s ready...but I can hold it for a while if you two want.”

John’s eyes widened as though a thought had just occurred to him. “No, we’re ready, but Ronnie? Have you heard from Brian? He left Briar Rose a week ago and Freddie hasn’t seen him since.”

“But why would...” Freddie interrupted, bewildered.

“Brian and I talk a lot,” Veronica explained with a half-shrug. “Sometimes he comes over to do things with the kids or we go out, just the two of us.”

Freddie felt as though he had just been told about Brian’s secret career as a circus clown. He had always admired the easy way that Brian had gotten along with the entity that was Queen’s various wives and girlfriends. Freddie always found it difficult to adjust a friendship for the new dynamic that a significant other brought along. But he had never supposed Brian had formed friendships in their own right. He wondered once more how well he knew the other man and how much he had simply made him into the image in his own mind.

Veronica noted his surprise. “You know, Freddie, it isn’t always easy to be the partner of someone in a band. Even if...especially if you are also in that band, I suppose. It started off as the occasionally call to commiserate over this or that...and turned into a real friendship.” She frowned and shot a worried glance at John. “I suppose I last heard from Brian a couple weeks ago now...I could call his mother.”

“Please don’t,” Freddie interjected. “I am really... _really_...not ready for that conversation yet. If ever.”

John leaned forward slightly. “Freddie...”

“No, John, I think it will be best if we tell Brian’s folks by taking them ‘round my gravestone so I don’t have to witness it.”

A spasm of pain crossed John’s face and Freddie felt remorseful. “Please don’t joke about it,” John whispered.

“Yeah, well...right. Anyway, I j—just can’t do anything about that right now. All I can do is take care of myself, right?”

John seemed to steel himself. “Yeah, Freddie. C’mon, let’s go eat. Let’s go have quite a few glasses of wine.”

**DAY EIGHT**

Freddie had determined that the best way to go about his rehabilitation project was to concentrate on acting a little less selfishly than he had been. And there was one thing that he most certainly _did not_ want to do.

Freddie decided that the best way to tackle the task he had been dreading was to approach it sideways, as if he could surprise his brain into not dwelling on it with worry and trepidation.

He rehearsed no conversations, planned no opener and didn’t even plan a day or a time for the feared event. He picked Miko out of the all the cats and decided that when she came to sit in his lab he would immediately get up and go, no calling ahead, no forethought.

So when he had just settled in with a good glass of Chablis and a stack of Bernadette Peters tapes, of course the slim, pretty cat would meow a note of inquiry before lightly leaping onto his lap.

He stared down at her little furry face and reflexively bent to her demands for ear scratches. “Oh, fuck,” he informed her. She cocked her head to the side, decided the scratches were not to her liking and jumped down again.

The ride out to Roger’s country house went by in a blur, Terry eying him with concern in the rearview mirror. Freddie concentrated on the buzzing in his head, it prevented him from thinking too much. He longed to be driving through London with so much more to distract him than the endless hedgerows punctuated with the occasional tree. He spotted a small bird, sitting on a wire singing its heart out. Freddie wondered what kind of bird it was, Brian would kno—ah, no. He shook himself.

When the car pulled up to the house, there was nothing for it but to open up the door and force himself though, especially with Terry waiting behind the wheel for him to do exactly that. He trudged up the drive, trying to convince himself that this wasn’t anything at all like being led to his execution.

Freddie had his hand out to knock on the door when a three-and-a-half-foot tall tornado burst through the door and nearly knocked him over. He caught the child reflexively and steadied them both.

“Wha—what...” Freddie managed to get out before Roger appeared in the doorway, skittering around the entryway stair rail in socks and following his son out the door.

“Felix! You get your butt back in her—oh, Freddie.” Roger grabbed at the door jam and managed to stop himself before he too went careening into the singer. “Oh, good you caught him. Nice timing.”

“Roger, what in the name of all that is holy...” After the dark and oppressive silence that had been the majority of his life the last week, the sudden commotion was making Freddie’s head spin.

“Ah, well, you caught us a bit at sixes and sevens...Dom is at a doctor’s appointment for the baby...thirty-eight weeks, you know...and, well, I’m on child duty, the nanny’s sick or, umm, something...”

Felix squirmed in his hands and broke away running across the yard. “Oh, Jesus!” Freddie yelped just as Roger shouted, “After him!”

Freddie put his hands on his hips and regarded the drummer incredulously. “Roger, I didn’t come over to help you corral your brat.”

Roger rolled his eyes, peering after his child, “Freddie, I’m not sure you know what _badly_ behaved children are like…”

“Roger.”

“I know, I know. What is it, Fred?”

“This,” Freddie handed him the paper with the test results without further preamble. He ignored the part of himself that told him he was a coward to do it this way. _I just can’t come right out and say it. It’s too painful._

Roger studied the paper for a moment, a crease forming between his eyebrows. Then he looked back up at Freddie, confusion mingled with dawning horror. “What does it mean?”

“It means not the full blown stuff. Not yet at any rate. They give me five years, maybe ten for that. It means…” Freddie stumbled to a halt and took a shuddering breath. Roger was staring at him, clear blue eyes wide with shock. Freddie thought about those eyes, how he loved them for every transparent emotion they transmitted so easily. When Roger was happy, those eyes danced with the light of mischievous laughter. Freddie had seen them darken with pleasure, hooded and veiled with long, plush lashes. They sparked with anger when the drummer wasn’t getting his way, more than a match for any temper tantrum Freddie could muster up. How very unlike the obscure depths of a certain pair of hazel eyes he could think of—hazel eyes that illustrated that while the eyes might be the window to the soul, at certain angles, a window would do nothing but throw the viewer’s reflection back at them.

Freddie stared at those blue eyes, mourning a little for the loss of what he had had with Roger. Fucking him had always been so free and easy. When every other relationship in his life was fraught with unknown perils he often didn’t detect until it was too late, he could rely on Roger not to ask questions, to crack a joke when things threatened to get too serious. To show him with a wink or crooked eyebrow exactly what he was thinking and what he wanted. Now their breezy relationship had been warped into something dark and dangerous and vile. And it was all Freddie’s fault.

“It means you’re going to have to get tested.”

“Tested,” Roger said breathlessly. Freddie nodded, suddenly shy with this man he had known for so long.

Roger sucked in his breath and ran a hand through his hair, looking away. Freddie caught his scent from his movement and even here, even now, lust coursed through him like electricity. He started to reach for the drummer—to reassure him, to keep him close, he wasn’t quite sure. Roger fixed him with that blue stare again and his hand froze. “Have you told Brian?”

The name on Roger’s lips jarred Freddie to the core. Half-remembered conversations and glimpses of emotions that had never made sense bubbled up in Freddie’s conscience. A troubled confession in a dark bar. The way Freddie sometimes caught Roger looking at Brian when he’d been drinking, an odd mixture of need and self-loathing. Freddie’s mind couldn’t put the pieces together—not quite yet—but it was enough to offer himself one revelation. _No_ , he thought. He had told himself quite the lie all these years.

 _Fucking Roger has always been dangerous._  

**THAT SAME DAY**

It took him two hours to go inside the clinic. Brian spent the time shaking and cold, unable to unclench his hands from the steering wheel.

He had managed to convince himself to go about finding the clinic as an impersonal treasure hunt, something to occupy his mind, to prevent it from stewing on self-incrimination and windswept vistas. It was almost easy to imagine himself as playing a role as a private detective as he slipped into a pub in Edinburgh whose name rang a bell. He ordered a pint and found a slim weekly in a rack by the hall to the gents. He paged to the classifieds in the back, eyes skimming over advertisements for Tarot readings and dance clubs. Finally, he found the number he was looking for, tore out the page and headed for the pay phone in the corner.

He put his hair up in a stocking cap that he had found in a ratty thrift shop around the corner from the bar. The kid at the counter had reminded him of Freddie and Roger when they had their stall in Kensington and all them only had the leavings of the customers to wear, passed back and forth between the three of them, four and sometimes five once John and Veronica had arrived. Mary had money, occasionally, and they would dress up in the clothes they would sell the next day and go out for a dinner they could barely afford, drinking themselves silly on cheap French _vin de table_ and filling up on bread.

He smiled when he thought of all the grandiose promises Freddie would make about the future at those dinners, toasting them all as he swayed in his chair and the owner of the little bistro shot him dirty looks. _We did everything you wanted and more_ , he thought, tucking his hair into the hat in the curtained off corner of the shop that passed as a dressing room. _So why is it that I haven’t been as happy as I was then, half-starved and disappointing my parents more and more every day, in the longest time?_ He looked at himself in the crooked mirror. He figured if he barely recognized himself no-one else would either. _I would give anything to be that happy for heavy-handed_ cassoulet _and soggy_ frites.

The private detective fantasy ran out as he pulled the car up in front of the non-descript building without an obvious sign. Suddenly, Brian couldn’t pretend that this wasn’t his life anymore. He couldn’t convince himself that this all was just a fun little challenge, an adventure to find the place running the most discreet tests. He was standing on a precipice with his life in his hands, waiting to see what the waiting crowds of white-coated doctors standing below would tell him to do with it. He wondered why they cared. He wondered if he did.

The clinic was as awful inside as he had imagined. He spent most of the time with his eyes closed against the clinical fluorescent light and the men with the same desperate look on their faces as he remembered from the mirror in the secondhand shop.

The nurse with some kindness still lurking in her eyes had taken one look at his disheveled clothes and dark circles under his eyes and told him that he could come back the next day for the results if he didn’t have a phone. He thanked her and stumbled out to the car park where he managed to drive back to his hotel without remembering a single second of the journey.

He sat on the edge of the bed, the flickering blue light of the television washing over him, and thought that he wouldn’t be able to sleep. But somehow, the next thing he realized, he was waking up on the floor at the foot of the bed, clothes even more wrinkled and the late afternoon sun cutting across his face from the crack between the curtains.

It only took him thirty minutes to go inside this time. He counted it as progress.

It wasn’t until he heard the word negative that he realized he was relieved. He hadn’t been entirely sure until that point which diagnosis he wanted to receive.


End file.
